The ANZCA Scholar Role requirements were overhauled at the start of the 2017 hospital employment year. The new requirements are to complete 5 activities by the end of Advanced Training, with any 2 of these completed by the end of Basic Training:
- Critically appraise a paper published in a peer-reviewed indexed journal for internal assessment
- Teach a skill (with evaluation, feedback and reflection)
- Facilitate a small group discussion/ running a tutorial (with evaluation, feedback and reflection)
- Critically appraise a topic for internal evaluation and present it to the department
- Complete an audit and provide a written report, which will be completed under the supervision of DSRTs only
With 2 further activities to be completed at any time during training (including PFT):
- Attend two regional or greater conferences / meetings
- Participate in 20 existing quality assurance programs (may include audit, critical incident monitoring, morbidity and mortality meetings
See the College website (Scholar Role Support Resources) for more details.
The activity typically requiring the most time and effort to complete is the audit. It’s worth taking time to determine a topic that is both important and of interest to you, while also being practical undertake. The requirements as stated by the College are:
An audit should be able to be completed in a six-month placement without involving multiple trainees. Trainees are required to plan the audit, sample and evaluate against established criteria, and plan an intervention if indicated. Although not required to implement the intervention and re-sample, the trainee may decide to undertake re-sampling in provisional fellowship training.
A useful resource is Raising the Standard: a compendium of audit recipes for continuous quality improvement in anaesthesia published by the The Royal College of Anaesthetists. This text covers the audit process and is a particularly valuable resource for those unsure of potential topics.
We have also made a simple checklist for your scholar role activities, to help keep track and make sure you do everything!
Access Anaesthesia 