Post-anesthesia Care Unit – General Anesthesia

00:03 When you reach the PACU, you should communicate with the nurse the information that he or she needs to continue to care for the patient. So, patient's identity, surgical procedure, other medical problems the patient may have, any anesthetic concerns, any allergies the patient has. And really, what you expect to be the recovery phase for this patient. You provide orders for pain management and management of nausea and vomiting, and provide orders for control of comorbidity. So, you may say the patient's blood pressure is allowed to rise to such and such, but beyond that call me or give the following drug. Same with the heart rates. And you don't want to leave the patient without the nurse having information that will allow proper care for the patient. If your communication is clear, the nurse should be able to anticipate potential problems and notify you if any occur. Recovery room nurses are extremely skilled and they rarely need to call the anesthesiologist. If they do, pay attention! Because if they're having trouble, you need to go and see the patient and deal with them. So, in summary, in this lecture we've discussed the preoperative evaluation of a patient, management of general anesthesia from induction, airway management, maintenance, to recovery.

01:27 We've talked about the transfer of the patient into the recovery room and the support that you are required to give to the recovery room nurse, to allow for proper care of the patient.