Revista de Anestesiologia Clínica: Acesso Aberto

Inauguration of a Successful Block Room at a Tertiary Care Facility: Different Plans and a Different Outcome

Abstract

Yasser Hammad, Yasser Reda, Mohamed Elarref, Abderrazak Sahraoui, Dhari Almenshid

Establishing a block room or dedicated space outside the operating theatres for performing regional anesthesia techniques is reported to improve patients' clinical care, satisfaction, enhance teaching and education and cost effect regarding saving operating room hours. In this article, the author represents two trials for establishing a successful block room at a tertiary care facility. By demonstration, the Plan-Do-Study-Act model for quality improvement, the essential components, and necessary actions were recognized and done over two years' timeframe. The number of patients receiving regional anesthesia in the block room increased significantly from 85 to around 200 after one year of operation. Then, it reached stability towards the end of the study period. The total no of patients who received regional anesthesia increased in 2018 compared to 2017 from 1800 (9%) to 2324 (11.6%), and in 2019 to 3132 (15.7%) of the total patients operated annually.

The annual cases for fellows increased significantly from 52 ± 28 cases to 164 ± 42 cases annually (p<0.05). The total daily working hours added nine daily hours to ORs to recruit more patients during the daytime.

In conclusion, establishing a successful block room helps improve patient's clinical care and decrease the cost of OR utilization by adding more hours to busy operating theatres and improving teaching and education.