Activities and treatment

DEFINITION

chirurgie ambulatoire

“Ambulatory surgery is surgery without hospitalization, consisting in programmed operations and explorations, carried out in technical conditions imperatively necessitating the security of an operating theater, employing different anesthetics, and followed by prolonged postoperative monitoring allowing  the patient to be discharged, without increased risk, on the day of his admission”. 

TREATMENT AND MANAGEMENT OF THE PATIENT

  • chirurgie ambulatoireThe role of the nurse in welcoming, educating and informing the patient is primordial.
  • Operations and supervised postoperative awakening respectively take place in the operating theaters and in the shared spaces of the nearby hospital. Neither surgeons nor anesthetists are dedicated to the unit.
  • Rather than a reception area, the ambulatory surgery unit is above all an organizational concept, a treatment circuit for a certain category of interventions: those that do not necessitate more than 12 hours of hospitalization, and can be programmed in advance.
  • This type of organization has the additional advantage of freeing beds for persons requiring conventional hospitalization. The objective is to prioritize the medical function and the first-rate technology of the hospital, and reducing to the minimum its serving as accommodations.

HALF A DAY IN AMBULATORY SURGERY

  • It is during the surgical consultation that ambulatory treatment is proposed, provided that the patient fulfills not only the medical, but also the social criteria: comprehension of what is being proposed, availability of a person to accompany him home and spend the following night at his bedside, residing less than an hour’s drive from the health care center. The decision to undertake ambulatory surgery is validated only after an anesthesia consultation, during which the date of the operation is determined.
  • 48 hours before the operation, a nurse from the unit calls the patient in order to confirm all relevant details and to give instructions on the hygiene and preoperative fasting conditions established by the anesthetist.
  • Admission to the unit takes place in stages between 7:15 A.M. and 2 P.M. according to the time of operation.
  • Once he has returned to the unit, the patient is once again seen by the surgeon and the anesthetist, who determine the time of discharge and provide postoperative instructions.