Department of AnesthesiologyMarcos F. Vidal Melo, MD, PhD - Professor
Chair, Department of Anesthesiology
Rebecca Terry White Distinguished Chair

• Departmental Intranet Home

• Departmental Public Home

• Simulation Center

• Monthly Schedule

• Research Resuscitation Lab

• Program Overview
  • Overall Program Goals and Curriculum Overview
  • Learning Objectives for Core Competencies
  • Compentency Based Curriculum
• Research Track
  • Research
• Vacation / Leave / Meetings / Benefits
  • Leave Policy
  • Resident Development Funds
• UTMB-General Info for Housestaff
  • Appointments, Benefits, Due Process, etc
  • Duty Hours
• Resident Home Page

Anesthesia Pre-operative Assessment and Plan

The American Board of Anesthesiology and American Society of Anesthesiology consider the pre-operative anesthesia evaluation to be mandatory. All patients require some form of assessment and plan for anesthesia prior to the induction of anesthesia. This is accomplished through pre-operative evaluation the night before surgery, pre-operative evaluation the day of surgery, or evaluation in the Day Surgery Unit (DSU). It has been the tradition that residents who are not available for pre-operative evaluation or DSU pre-op review will have a colleague complete the evaluation, call the attending anesthesiologist with the results, then contact the resident with the plan. This leads to situation where the resident actually providing care to the patient may not actually receive the pre-operative anesthesia information or not develop a plan for anesthetizing the patient. This places the patient at increased risk and results in a diminished learning experience for the resident. As a result, the following policy will provide that the resident actually scheduled to provide anesthesia will be responsible for contacting the anesthesia attending scheduled to supervise the case prior to surgery and that an anesthesia plan will be generated.

Policy:

1. It is the responsibility of the resident scheduled to provide anesthesia for a patient at UTMB to contact the scheduled anesthesia faculty with an anesthesia pre-operative evaluation and anesthetic plan.
2. Contact with the faculty includes :may consist of:
a. Direct conversation with the faculty.
b. Phone conversation with the faculty.
c. Attempted phone contact with a message left on an answering machine that includes as a minimum; the cases scheduled, the resident assigned, and a call back number to the resident. Additional information is at the residents discretion.
3. If a pre-operative evaluation from DSU is incomplete or unavailable, contact with the anesthesia faculty by the resident provider is still required.
4. If an “AC” start is planned, pre-operative evaluation will be targeted to the faculty assigned to the operating room for the day. Discussion with the “AC Faculty” may be required.

It is recognized that a spectrum of faculty expectations exists, and that a variety of responses to resident evaluations will be encountered. None the less, pre-operative review of the patient with faculty assisted generation of an anesthetic plan by the resident actually scheduled to provide patient care is mandatory for residents in the Department of Anesthesiology at UTMB.

Colleagues may still be assigned to perform the pre-op evaluation when a resident is post-call or returning from vacation. However, it is the ultimate responsibility of the resident scheduled to do the case to review this pre-op and contact the faculty. “No one called me with my pre-op” is NOT a valid excuse.