To ask anyone in the NHS how day surgery lists are determined?

[ScuderiaSedici]

As above

Yes - it’s tomorrow. I wasn’t told about a pre-op appointment other than over the phone (which I did before I got the date, they said it was good for a year)

Just relax, you’re not the first person to go to day surgery. You’ll be fine. Stop being dramatic. It won’t hurt you to fast for 2-12 hours.

Okay I’ve just googled and apparently because it’s a short, simple procedure a lot of trusts are increasingly doing them over the phone if you don’t have a complex medical history?

I’m assuming then they will do consent tomorrow on the day with you and run through things!

They’ll probably make you do one on the day anyway (pee in a pot for them to test). I will say don’t argue with them about the need for it and just go with it if they do ask you to do this, like you there was zero chance of pregnancy for me either for my recent surgery. But sometimes people will say that when it’s absolutely not the case (I don’t know why, people are weird!), and understandably the surgeon will not want to take the medicolegal risks of operating on a pregnant women without full consideration and knowledge, and fair enough if you put yourself in their shoes!

Do you have a book or series you are very interested in?
If not could you look for one tonight?
If you are autistic your best bet is probably trying to absolutely absorb yourself into something for the day and zone out the time passing. Otherwise you'll sit there clock watching and getting more and more stressed like currently.

We always saw my son's surgeons after his surgeries. To be fair, his early surgeries were all unplanned, his first ever surgery was an emergency one but even with his last surgery which was planned and relatively routine (It did unexpectedly take 5 hours instead of the planned 2 hours, my son can't do anything the easy way apparently!) we saw his surgeon afterwards.

Unless that's just a paeds surgery thing?

Our trust do phone apts and then come in for bloods and swabs and the wash that you do for 5 days prior. For some smaller surgeries they don’t always do it (under LA, excisions etc).
trusts work in different ways though.

My phone call was half an hour, it was quite in depth - asking about medications, previous history etc. im guessing because im pretty boring i didn’t need a face to face,

Latex-free gloves are horrible to work in (sort of sticky and slippery at the same time) and in specialties that depend very much on ‘feel’ it can make things trickier so a lot of people only wear them when they really have to. Latex probably will disappear one day but they need to come up with something better first.

Don’t worry - I had surgery from our local NHS trust and no bloods or swabs, but did have them when I had private surgery. So nothing will be wrong, just your trust has deemed low risk so doesn’t want bloods and swabs.

I went first as they thought I had a latex allergy.

@Greybeardy- why is so much of the advice online to not wear deodorant or body lotion? My letter doesn’t mention it explicitly but a lot of the stuff online says not to (and is it a problem that I put it on after my shower?)

because the information online is not specific to you. Different hospitals, departments, surgeons, procedures have different protocols. You’ve been given yours in your letter.

Maybe they’ve decided if your low risk and it’s a day case procedure it’s not necessary. Don’t worry. They’ll soon tell you tomorrow if it’s an issue!

If just feels quite unfair that it could end up cancelled because of something I didn’t even do wrong

I work for 3 depts - all lists are mixed at my trust godchildren first

I can’t have nitrile gloves - only latex. If they use nitrile on me I have an allergic reaction - it’s even worse if the gloves are blue. Natural coloured latex gloves are all I can use

im also a nurse so can’t see patients who have a latex allergy

Ah ok that makes sense then, they must have done one or the other! I totally understand what you mean about non latex gloves as I’m a GP and the non latex ones just aren’t as good, especially the cheaper end ones (which of course is what the NHs likes us to have 🤣). But luckily I don’t have a lot of call for it in my work at least now we are past 2020! Can I ask as I’m thinking maybe you’re a surgeon, do you know what the sticky stuff is for surgical drapes? Because I came up in an awful clearly allergic rash (in a square pattern lol) to that after my op! So must be allergic to something in that too for goodness sake. I know I am allergic to Elastoplast but I did tell them that.

Body lotion/facial moisturisers make it difficult to get any of the monitoring (ecg dots)/dressings to stick. Not a scooby why deodorant comes up…unless it’s armpit surgery that shouldn’t make a difference.

Iv always been nhs and they've always done these things unless im on my period then they dont ask for the pregnancy test. But 9 times out of 10 I seem to be as stress seems to bring it on for me

Oh wow ! . So I used to be last on the lists for day surgery due to being"healthy" . Turns out bc of my pain condition I have an extremely high tolerance to Anaesthetics and painkillers . Anyway I've had 3 day surgeries and 2 I was last on the list - one I went down at 4pm. The last surgery I had was a follow on from a previous surgery with the same team as my previous one and because I'm given stronger and higher doses of pain relief and need longer in recovery I would go first . If you are that concerned around fasting for too long then you can get up before the nil by mouth time and have a snack but there's a reason why there's an order to a list .

Would it be really naughty if I put some on my elbows 🤣

I think that’s pretty unlikely, if it was important for this procedure then pre-op would have arranged the swabs. Don’t stress over that, it will be fine.

You learn something new everyday