Please come to Day Surgery Reception, where you will be met and shown to your bed by a nurse. By the bed you will have a chair, a cabinet and a locker.
The nurse will measure your vital signs and complete a pre-operative checklist. You will need to put on a hospital gown, and you may have to wear anti-embolism stockings.
You will be seen by the team performing your operation. They will explain what is going to happen and answer any questions you have.
You will also meet a doctor from the anaesthetic team. They will ask about your health and current medication and discuss the best type of anaesthesia for you and the procedure you are having. If you have any concerns about anaesthesia, this is the time to discuss them.
You may have to wait some time for your operation; this depends how long each procedure on the list before you lasts. Please be patient.
You can walk into the operating theatre or be wheeled in on a trolley. In the theatre the lights are bright and there will be lots of technology, including the anaesthetic machine and monitoring system. There may also be several people dressed in blue theatre clothes.
This is the team who will be looking after you. They will have discussed all their cases in detail; we use a World Health Organisation checklist to ensure everything runs smoothly.
It is normal to feel nervous, but you will meet the anaesthetists, the nurses and your surgeon. They will help to soothe any jitters you have.
If you are having a general anaesthetic, this is applied by a small plastic tube into one of your veins. If you are having a nerve-blocking procedure to numb the area near your surgery, or combined with a general anaesthetic, the anaesthetist may give you a sedative to help you relax.
Your anaesthetist stays right next to you while the operation is carried out.
This is where you are taken after the operation to wake up. There are four beds and you have one-to-one nursing care while you are there. A nurse or anaesthetist will ensure your pain is controlled and treat any nausea.
The anaesthetist and recovery nurse ensure all the relevant information about what happened in the theatre is passed on.
Once you are awake, we take you back to the ward, where the nurses will continue with your care and monitor your progress.
You will be offered light refreshments, while we prepare pain killers and other medicines for you to take away. You can leave only when you are fully awake, and any pain or nausea is under control. This may take a couple of hours – or even longer.
All our wards contain separate, single-sex bays and bathrooms.
