Question re: preop evals from a med student

[gasblaster]

Naive question from a MS4. So as a med student I've only had experience with anesthesia and preop evals in the inpatient, academic hospital setting. For those of you that have experience in the ambulatory, outpatient, community hospital, etc. setting, how are the preop evals typically done? See them at a preop clinic, telephone call to the patient, on the day of surgery? Thanks in advance.

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[psychbender]

At the old hospital, every outpatient was seen in the preop clinic a few days before their procedure. At most of our other hospitals, only the sicker patients, or those undergoing certain procedures or with certain co- morbidities are seen preop, the rest are seen on day of surgery.

 

[PMPMD]

Naive question from a MS4. So as a med student I've only had experience with anesthesia and preop evals in the inpatient, academic hospital setting. For those of you that have experience in the ambulatory, outpatient, community hospital, etc. setting, how are the preop evals typically done? See them at a preop clinic, telephone call to the patient, on the day of surgery? Thanks in advance.

I have seen all of the above at various community hospitals. The community preop clinic I saw was run by nurses, who would call the physicians and review the chart.

 

[jwk]

Regardless, each and every patient should be seen and interviewed personally in pre-op on the day of surgery.

 

[Mman]

Naive question from a MS4. So as a med student I've only had experience with anesthesia and preop evals in the inpatient, academic hospital setting. For those of you that have experience in the ambulatory, outpatient, community hospital, etc. setting, how are the preop evals typically done? See them at a preop clinic, telephone call to the patient, on the day of surgery? Thanks in advance.

We have a preop clinic staffed by RNs that follow protocols to ensure the proper preop tests (labs, EKG, CXR, etc) are ordered. If they get nervous about somebody we will talk on the phone with them to help determine if the patient needs something like an Echo or stress test or cardiology consult.

We talk with the patient on the day of surgery and review the pertinent test results. If the surgeons get concerned about a patient, they can send them over to us for a preop consult with an anesthesiologist, but that's far less than 1% of cases.