Western Australian Audit of Surgical Mortality (WAASM)
The WAASM process
The WAASM methodology flowchart gives a diagrammatic representation of the following process:
- Deaths where a surgeon was involved in the care of the patient that occur in public hospitals are automatically notified to WAASM through The Open Patient Administration System (TOPAS), or directly by the medical records departments of regional and private hospitals.
- The consultant surgeon is sent a proforma for completion, highlighting any areas for consideration or concern or adverse events that may have occured.
- The completed proforma is anonymised and then given to another consultant surgeon ('first-line assessor') for peer review.
- If the case warrants an additional detailed review it may then be referred to a 'second-line assessor' for case note review.
- Feedback is disseminated to all surgeons, hospitals and the public via WAASM Annual Reports and other formats.
- The process is currently protected by the:
What is WAASM
The Western Australian Audit of Surgical Mortality is an external, independent and confidential peer review surgical audit based on evidence based methodology adapted from the Scottish Audit of Surgical Mortality. WAASM commenced in 2001, and is funded by the Department of Health, Western Australia, while being managed by the Royal Australasian College of General Surgeons. WAASM is designed to provide feedback by surgeons to surgeons; the purpose of this feedback to inform, educate, facilitate change and improve practice of all clinicians.
WAASM annual reports
The WAASM website contains annual reports that incorporate de-identified trend information of cumulative data gathered through the audit process.
File Formats
Some documents for download on this website are in a Portable Document Format (PDF). To read these files you might need to download Adobe® Acrobat Reader.