The surgical specialty describes the area of clinical expertise held by the doctor performing the elective surgery.
This section presents information on 11 categories of surgical specialty. The ‘other’ category contains data for surgeons whose specialty was not one of the 11 specified categories.
In 2015–16, the surgical specialty data element was revised to include Paediatric surgery. Use of the Paediatric surgery category varied among jurisdictions. For 2016–17, Paediatric surgery was reported by Western Australia, South Australia, Tasmania and the Australian Capital Territory. New South Wales commenced reporting Paediatric surgery in 2017–18. Before this change, records for which the surgical specialty was Paediatric surgery would have been allocated to another surgical specialty or ‘other’ (surgical specialty other than one of the 10 specified specialties).