Preoperative opportunities

Abstract

Anaesthesiologists are increasingly being placed in situations where a sick, high risk patient has to be assessed insuboptimal circumstances, minutes before anaesthesia and surgery. This is obviously not in the interests of neither the patient nor us, as a specialty, and it certainly does notallow for adequate time to obtain informed consent. Ethically, it is not the place for discussion of anaesthetic fees. In addition, many of the complaints against anaesthesiologists that are received by the HPCSA are in fact about too brief a preoperative assessment, or a lack of knowledge about our fees, which emanates from this lack of opportunity to discuss them. Many Health Funders will not pay for patients to be admitted the night before surgery, and this is a world-wide occurrence.