Partner News: RANZCOG advances patient outcomes at Wellington meeting

Published on Friday, 10 January 2025

The Royal Australian & New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RANZCOG) Annual Scientific Meeting (ASM) in Wellington expects to leave a long-term legacy improving healthcare outcomes for women in Australia and New Zealand.

Held at Tākina Wellington Convention & Exhibition Centre, 12-16 October 2024, the RANZCOG ASM brought together nearly 800 New Zealand and Australian specialists in obstetrics and gynaecology.

Themed ‘Partnerships in Practice’, it underscored the importance of relationships within healthcare, particularly in leadership, decision-making, and governance.

As part of this, RANZCOG undertook a legacy project with support from Business Events Wellington, aiming to address a gap in the understanding of labour and birth outcomes due to a lack of data. Specific sessions in the programme saw 25 hospitals share and examine comparable data, using the Ten Group Classification System.

Sara MacArthur, RANZCOG Manager, Events says: “To get data from 25 hospitals was a huge undertaking. Initially, we thought if we could get five it would be amazing.”

Dr Pelle Kempe, Chair of the Conference Organising Committee, adds: “That knowledge is powerful. A lot of those 25 units will go back to their hospital and say where can we improve?”

Dr Kempe said the long-term goal is establishing a national registry to capture quality data in gynaecology and obstetrics.

In addition, RANZCOG centred Māori and First Nations people in the conference content, in recognition of inequality and poorer birth outcomes for these groups.

MacArthur adds: “The content was very well-received and interwoven into the programme in Wellington, not just run as a stand-alone session. It made me think how we could do it in Australia as well.”

She notes the benefits of hosting the Australasian event in Tākina and Wellington.

“It’s an inviting place for a convention centre. There has been a really good energy to this event.”

For more information on bringing your conference to New Zealand, visit https://businessevents.newzealand.com/conferences/