This document provides guidelines for clinical practice and education for healthcare providers responsible for resuscitation services within healthcare institutions.
Health care institutions have a duty of care to provide an effective resuscitation service for patients, staff and visitors within the organisation and to ensure that their employees are educated to recognise and respond to acute deterioration.

This institutional responsibility includes the provision of related education, the allocation of human and material resources to support provision of resuscitation services, a process for evaluation of the quality of resuscitation and its improvement. The education should enable individual staff to develop and maintain a level of competence commensurate with their roles within their healthcare setting.
Timely and effective recognition and treatment of those whose condition is deteriorating is important for positive patient outcomes.

Standard 8 from the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care (ACSQHC) National Safety and Quality Health Service (NSQHS) Standards (2021) is the “Recognising and Responding to Acute Deterioration Standard”. This Standard describes the systems and processes to be implemented by health services to respond effectively to patients when their clinical condition deteriorates.

Throughout this document, the term healthcare institution is used to designate an area where clinical care of patients is undertaken but is not limited to hospitals. These principles should be applied across the broad spectrum of health services. Health care institutions should base their resuscitation services on a detailed assessment of risk at their sites.

Clinical Standards For Resuscitation – August 2024 V2 (755 KB)