What will happen when I am admitted to the hospital for same-day surgery?
When you're admitted to the hospital for same day surgery (that means surgery on the day of admission), you'll arrive and be taken to a pre-operative surgical waiting room area, asked to change into a gown and safeguard your valuables, and then be interviewed by a registered nurse and anesthesiologist. You'll be asked to fill out forms, you'll have your vital signs checked, you'll be asked to asked to describe the surgery you're expecting, you'll be given a sedative to relax, and ultimately you'll be taken to the operating room. Please understand that before the actual procedure starts, the staff, the nurses, and the physicians at the hospital will go through what's called a time-out. The time-out is a quiet time before the surgery starts, where again to maximize patient safety, your identity is verified one more time, the surgical procedure is verbally announced by all the people who will be involved in it, there'll be a verification as to which part of your body will be operated on. If there's an opportunity to be in one of two places, the nurses will review the medical records to make sure it's complete, make sure the X-rays and all the documentation and instrumentation that the doctors need to perform the surgery are ready and available. At that point, once everything is clearly in place, the doctors will leave the room and scrub to get into a sterile condition, and return to begin the surgical procedure.
