Emergency laparotomy remains one of the highest-risk procedures performed in acute surgical practice, with significant variation in outcomes across health services. This launch of the national Emergency Laparotomy Clinical Care Standard by the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care marks an important step toward improving the safety, consistency, and quality of care delivered to patients requiring urgent abdominal surgery. The Clinical Care Standard builds on and aligns with the work of Australian and New Zealand Emergency Laparotomy Audit – Quality Improvement (ANZELA-QI). This session will introduce the key features of the Clinical Care Standard, including timely recognition and escalation, multidisciplinary perioperative care, risk stratification, shared decision making about treatment, senior clinician involvement, and structured postoperative management. The presentation will outline what the Standard will mean for surgeons, other clinicians and healthcare services, and discuss implementation priorities across diverse hospital settings. The first national Standard for emergency laparotomy represents a collective opportunity to improve performance measurement, strengthen clinical governance, and ultimately improve patient outcomes in one of surgery’s most time-critical and high-risk domains.