Annex A > Chapter 15 - Post-operative Care > Involvement of clinical staff > Anaesthetists
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Anaesthetists
107 Dr Pryn explained the anaesthetists' ward round. If he were the on-call anaesthetist on a Monday, he would wait until his patient in theatre was safely established before visiting the BRI ICU for a complete ward round. That would normally take place at 10 to 10.30 in the morning:
`So this would be the way the anaesthetic ward rounds were done on a Monday or Friday. On Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday it would have been as previously stated, around 9 o'clock.' [135]
108 Dr Pryn said that when he conducted a ward round at 9 o'clock he found that complex decisions, with which he disagreed, had been taken in a hurry, at the earlier registrars' ward round. [136] This happened `relatively frequently'. [137]
109 Dr Pryn commented on what would happen if a decision had been made at the surgeons' 8 o'clock ward round which he would have disagreed with, on a day when he did not have a round at 9 o'clock:
`It would either have been picked up on when the anaesthetists did their round, at 10, 10.30, on Monday or Friday, or it would not have been picked up at all. At weekends, the anaesthetic consultant on for the weekend would always do a thorough ward round, around intensive care, with the Surgical Registrars on for that weekend. It was better at weekends because there was not this pressure of time, assuming we did not have an emergency case. Quite often we had emergency cases to do on a Saturday morning, which meant that again the anaesthetist could not get to do their ward round because we were doing an emergency case.' [138]
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Footnotes
[136] WIT 0341 0011 - 0012 Dr Pryn