Preparation before surgery is important to achieving the best possible outcome. Your overall health, the type of surgery, and the anesthesia needed for the surgery will affect your outcome and the experience that you have.
Service in
Pre-Operative Assessment
Overview
At the Preoperative Assessment Center, our team has the specific expertise to evaluate you and work with your surgeon and other physicians to design a comprehensive care plan that is unique to you.
What is the Preoperative Assessment?
The Preoperative Assessment Center is a single location to complete many of the tasks necessary to get ready for surgery, including a comprehensive health review, education about ways to improve your health before surgery, and time to answer any questions you have about the process.
Our team has an anesthesiology-led preoperative assessment team that are experts in understanding how your current health status and how your medications may affect you while you are having anesthesia and surgery. We identify potential problems ahead of time and work closely with you and your doctor to address these issues before your surgical procedure.
When you are not properly prepared before surgery, it may lead to cancellation of your surgery at the last minute, or can result in complications during or after surgery. On the other hand, preparation can:
- Improve your surgical outcomes
- Reduce your risk of complications
- Speed up your recovery
Our approach
We are here to prepare you mentally and physically for your surgery. In additional to pre-surgery physical exams, the Preoperative Assessment Center provides the following services:
- Health Status Review
We do a complete review of your medical information to make sure you are optimized for surgery. If not, we will work with your primary care provider to help get you ready. - Specialty Care Review
We review which specialists you see to determine whether or not additional tests or follow-up visits would be helpful. In many cases we can determine that your most recent tests give us the information we need. This helps you to avoid unnecessary tests and visits, and can save you money. - Medication Review
We review all your current medications and doses and provide you with a specific instructions about which medications to continue or stop before surgery, and when. - Documentation review
We will check to see if the paperwork required for surgery has been done, including consent form, surgical history and physical, insurance preauthorization. If needed, we will work with you to complete this information. - Patient Education
Our nurses will educate you on how to get ready for surgery. This may include healthy eating guidelines, pre-surgery exercises and stress reduction. - Surgery Preparation
We will make sure you have all the information you need to prepare for the day of your surgery. This will include what you can eat before surgery, when to stop eating, where and when to arrive for surgery, where to park, etc. - Smoking Cessation
We also can provide you with resources to help you stop smoking if that is a requirement before you can have surgery. - Integrative Therapy and Pain Management Planning
Our team is available to discuss any integrative therapies you might be interested in after surgery, such as aroma therapy and healing touch. For patients who have chronic pain, one of our pain management nurses can discuss a plan with you for managing your pain after surgery. - Discharge Planning
We also will discuss with you a plan for what will happen once you leave the hospital. This may include a plan for transitional care or post-surgery physical therapy.
