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from Section 3 - Passing the Gas
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 June 2025
Sometimes you will be asked to provide anaesthesia for patients outside of operating theatre environment. This includes the psychiatric unit for electroconvulsive therapy (ECT),
the accident and emergency department, the coronary care unit and the radiology department. In addition, you may be asked to maintain anaesthesia for the interhospital transfer of patients.
The same standards of safe delivery of anaesthesia still apply. These include qualified, experienced assistance, a fully functioning anaesthetic machine, suction and a tilting trolley/table and the usual array of laryngoscopes, face masks, airways and tracheal tubes. In addition, there must be the standard monitoring equipment, the usual drugs including emergency drugs and facilities for resuscitation including drugs and a defibrillator.
In some circumstances it may be possible (although inconvenient) to transfer the patient to main theatres, but in some cases, this is not possible. This includes diagnostic and interventional radiological procedures, which for the latter may be complex and lengthy. In addition, MRI requires specific MRI “safe equipment”. Finally, the transfer of patients via ambulance requires the patient to be physiologically stable prior to departure and this may require tracheal intubation, as well as appropriate monitoring (e.g. arterial line) and drugs (e.g. inotropes).
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