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Tips for Improving Anesthesia Efficiency

One vital step in performing surgery is providing anesthesia efficiently and safely. Enhancing anesthesia efficiency begins during, before, and after the surgery. With efficient and smooth anesthesia service, you provide streamlined processes in the operating room, reduce cancellations, minimize recovery time, and enhance operating rooms’ utilization. Here are tips for improving anesthesia efficiency.

1. Prepare Patients on Time

Ensure you prepare all the medical supplies required for the surgery at the start of the day. This will accelerate the turnover time of the operating room. Also, ensure that you review the patient’s paperwork a day before to minimize cancellations and pre-operation time.

2. Eliminate Unnecessary Testing

Most of the surgeons recommend extensive pre-operative tests on their patients. It is essential to understand that patients with cardiac problems might need extensive tests, while healthier patients such as an athlete undergoing joint operation might not require such tests. This may at times lead to positives that are not true, which result in delayed surgeries. Anesthesiologists and physicians must communicate and come up with a pre-operative test plan. Such a plan will consider the patient’s therapeutic history to minimize unnecessary testing and increase patient satisfaction.

3. Communicate with the OR Team, Surgical Team, and the Patient

For the anesthesia department to be aware of the surgery time, there must be good communication. Communication will help them to know the amount of dose to administer based on the duration the surgery is planned to take. On the other hand, involving the other teams, such as the recovery room team, will ensure that they are prepared to receive the person after the surgery. Simultaneously, the pre-op team starts to prepare the next patient, which prevents delay. With good scheduling and communication, you avoid having empty OR, having dissatisfied patients, and losing revenues.

4. Schedule Effectively

To improve anesthesia efficiency, you should avoid scheduling surgeries horizontally. This is where you use all ORs for specified time surgery, and afterward, the rooms are left empty. Leaving ORs empty is a sign of inefficiency. If the surgeons are in the hospital idling, this will not help the patients nor generate revenue. Vertical block scheduling will ensure that the duration planned for surgery is enough to complete it. This will help the surgeons and the patients to have an effective schedule since they do not have to wait to complete the previous procedure. Scheduling effectively is essential since idle time takes from anesthesia and surgical time, making patients more anxious.

5. Standardize

Standardization is another key thing that helps in improving anesthesia efficiency. There are things that you standardize even though every person is different. These things include protocols for the surgery and the type of anesthetic. Standardization also involves the anesthetics quality. The anesthesia team may select high-quality anesthetics based on the patient’s needs by being updated on evidence-based drugs. This will prevent complications during recovery and lead to patient satisfaction.

6. Consider Reconfiguring

Anesthesia inefficiency may be due to the layout of your hospital. Having a good flow from reception to recovery room plays a huge role in ensuring anesthesia efficiency. This means that the recovery rooms and pre-operative area should be very close to the operating rooms, reducing turnover time and enhancing patient satisfaction.

Conclusion

Finally, anesthesia efficiency is a key thing that every hospital should try to improve. The above-discussed tips will help you to improve this efficiency. For instance, proper scheduling will prevent anesthesia re-dosing and avoid delays. Also, consider other tips such as reconfiguring to ensure a smooth flow from one step to another.

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Alex

Alex is the co-author of 100 Greatest Plays, 100 Greatest Cricketers, 100 Greatest Films and 100 Greatest Moments. He has written for a wide variety of publications including The Observer, The Sunday Times, The Daily Mail, The Guardian and The Telegraph.

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