What to expect at your POAC visit

The pre-operative period is an opportunity for us to 'optimise' and improve on aspects of your health to make operations safer, reduce the risk of complications and to help you recover faster and 'better'.

Find out about you - The "HSQ"

For many, this will start with completion of what we call the "Health Screening Questionnaire", or HSQ.

This form will be given to you to complete, by your surgical team, by the POAC team, or sent to you in the post.

The HSQ helps us to find out about aspects of your health, physical fitness and any medications you may be taking.

The HSQ contains questions that will be explored in further detail in your POAC visit, we will ask about:

General health, physical activity and medical history
Previous operations, anaesthetics, and any problems you or your family may have experienced
Allergies and medications you are taking, including those from your GP and over-the-counter
Smoking, alcohol and recreational drug history and habits

Following completion of HSQ, you will either have a phone consultation, or a clinic appointment with a specialist pre-operative assessment nurse, this may be combined with meeting an Anaesthetic doctor, attending specialist clinics or undergoing investigations, more information about these different appointments may be found below.

Nurse Led Clinics

Nurse led clinic appointments generally take around an hour, though straightforward patients may take less time, and more complex patients may take more time depending on the complexity of you and/or the surgery planned.

Following seeing a specialist nurse, you may also need to see an Anaesthetist or have further investigation, tests, or sometimes treatment, we can sometimes organise these on the same day, but you may be asked to return on another day.

Anaesthetist Clinics

You may need to see an Anaesthetist as part of your preparation for surgery. Where we can this is the same day as other appointments. This appointment will be opportunity for you to discuss anaesthesia, risks, ways to reduce risks before your operation.

Shared Decision Making (SDM);

Undergoing surgery for many is a significant life event, and can be daunting.
Shared decision making describes the process that you as a patient, and we as doctors and nurses, together choose the best treatment decision for you.
It involves finding out about you, your health, what you value most about your health and future, and discussing the risks that may be involved with undergoing anaesthesia and surgery.
When meeting an Anaesthetist as part of the preparation process, discussion of risk is likely to form a large part of the discussions.
The video to the right helps to explain how this process works, and to help guide you in your own decisions.

Below are some links to websites that explain SDM in more detail. The BRAN tool can be used to help patients with decisions about care, it splits decisions into four parts; Benefits of any decision, Risks involved, Alternative Treatments that may be available, and finally "What If I do Nothing?".