We have two admission times; 7.30am for morning theatre lists and 12.30pm for afternoon theatre lists. Your letter will tell you which time to arrive. Please read this letter carefully.

Theatre sessions start at 9am and 1.30pm. Patients are asked to arrive earlier in order to prepare them for theatre. There can be up to 7 patients on each theatre list and the order of the list is made up of the most complex cases and patients receiving a general anaesthetic (as they take longer to recover) first, followed by patients who require a local anaesthetic or less complex procedures.

We require every patient to arrive at 7.30am or 12.30pm so that every patient can be seen by their consultant, their anaesthetist, admitting nurse and physiotherapists before going to theatre. The consultant and anaesthetist have to be in theatre before 9am/1pm to prepare for the list. Once they are in theatre they are unable to come out as this would increase the infection risk to others. This would also delay the list even further.

All patients are advised in their letters that depending on where they are on the list that they may have between a 1 – 5 hour wait for their procedure.

The Day Surgery Ward is a very busy unit and we can often use each trolley 2/3 times a day.  This increases our patient flow and therefore reduces waiting lists. This sometimes means that our afternoon patients sometimes are left waiting in waiting room whilst we are trying to discharge our morning patients. We apologise for this wait but we work extremely hard to get all our patients through and do not wish to cancel anybody’s surgery.

We advise that you bring a book, puzzles or magazines to keep you occupied.