Caring About Perioperative Care

Lauren Mackell

There is something uniquely special about the interactions that take place within the realm of perioperative care. With the fast pace nature of surgery, it can become easy to stumble into the routine of preop, operating room, PACU, and repeat without stopping to take a second and think about what each individual patient is experiencing. For healthcare professionals, it is simply a normal day at work, while for the patient undergoing an operation, it can truly be the scariest day of their life.

It is essential to step back and recognize what the patient may be thinking as they anxiously await rolling back to the operating room. For some, the surgery they are about to endure may alter their entire life. It may change the way they walk, the way they move, it may alter their physical appearance and change the way they view themselves or perhaps change the way others view them. The scars on their body act as a landmark and lifelong reminder of that particular surgery day. This can be scary or traumatic, and some may not have family around to comfort them and encourage them in recovery. The anesthesiologist is gifted with the opportunity to make an impact on each patient they encounter. An opportunity to make them smile, to make them feel safe, or to reduce their fear. As medical students, we too share this opportunity, particularly while on an anesthesia rotation.

Many people within the surgical care team can become busy when tasked with putting in orders, charting, and preparing for each case. As medical students, we often have a few extra minutes in the midst of organized chaos. In those minutes, I encourage other students to go talk with your patients. Make the effort to ask the patient how they are really doing. If they are scared, reassure them; if they are excited, rejoice with them; if they joke, laugh with them. Take time to hear their stories while they share their life experiences. Not only do you help the patient through their difficult endeavor, but these experiences also help teach you how to become a more compassionate and empathetic physician.

Perioperative care, often overlooked, is the pinnacle in optimizing a patient’s experience and in turn, their view and trust of the healthcare system. Those few extra minutes of conversation can change someone’s life, and this is why we care about perioperative care.