An electronic surgical order, undertaking patient education, and obtaining informed consent for regional analgesia before the day of surgery reduce block-related delays

• Published in: Local and regional anesthesia 2016-01, Vol.9, p.59-64
• Main Authors: Brooks, Brandon S, Barman, Joydip, Ponce, Brent A, Sides, Alisa, Vetter, Thomas R
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Analgesics; Analysis; Anesthesia; Anesthesiology; Anxiety; Bone surgery; Decision making; Educational aspects; Ethical aspects; Informed consent; Local anesthesia; Multimedia; Original Research; Orthopedics; Pain management; Patient education; performance improvement; peripheral nerve blockade; Regional analgesia; Surgeons; Ultrasonic imaging
• ISSN: 1178-7112; 1178-7112
• DOI: 10.2147/LRA.S115432

Obtaining patient informed consent for a regional analgesia block on the day of surgery can result in surgical case delays. We hypothesized that implementing a preoperative electronic surgical order, undertaking patient education, and obtaining informed consent for a regional block in our preoperative assessment clinic prior to the day of surgery would reduce surgical case delays attributed to our regional anesthesia pain service and increase the percentage of patients for whom our regional anesthesia pain service was requested to provide a block. A prospective two-group time-series design, with a nonrandomized, pre- and post-intervention data collection strategy, was applied. Based upon the surgeons' newly implemented preoperative electronic outpatient orders, patients were identified by our preoperative assessment clinic staff to receive educational materials. The attending anesthesiologist in the preoperative assessment clinic then obtained written informed consent. Block-related delay and utilization data were analyzed with conventional inferential statistics. We observed a 14.8% (95% CI: 9.4%, 20.1%;