the patients right to know who is the anesthesiologist

From some other hospital websites:

"Patient's Rights:

Know the identity, professional status, and experience of physician anesthesiologists involved in your care.

You have the right to know the name and specialty of the doctor responsible for your care."

I'm having my RLP surgery 3/26/13 at Vanderbilt Hospital (Dr. Smith). I've asked who will be the anesthesiologist for my surgery, and the answer is we don't know. My scheduled meeting with the anesthesiologist the day prior (per agenda sent to me), isn't with him/her as I was told today when I called there, as the anesthesiologist will most likely be in surgery. I will meet with some other pre-op team and they will determine if pre-op tests are needed. This is less than 24 hours prior to my surgery.

I am maybe being too anxious, but it seems that this isn't too much to want to know. Is it or not?

Wally, according to Vanderbilt University Hospital's website (under Patient Rights and Responsibilities), item #7 states: "Your right to know the identity, professional status, role, and business relationship of all who participate in your care". It certainly seems that you should know who the anesthesiologist will be for your surgery. But, the surgical schedule for March is probably not known yet so there's no way to tell who the anesthesiologist will be. However, many surgeons work closely with a few anesthesiologists so perhaps the surgeon's office can give you the names of those that your surgeon works with.

When my husband had his surgery, he met the anesthesiologist for the first time during his pre-op. The anesthesiologist came in to speak with my husband and I and was accompanied by the surgeon. He carefully went over my husband's medical history, asked pertinent questions, then spoke at length about the surgery and what was going to happen. He talked about the type of anesthesia that would be used as well as the pre-op medication given (usually something like liquid Valium), and discussed possible complications and side effects from the anesthesia.

The anesthesiologist is actually the one who "has your life in his/her hands"...they're the one who monitors all your vital functions and alerts the surgeon and/or nursing staff if there is an issue. The morning after my husband's prostatectomy, both the surgeon and the anesthesiologist showed up in his hospital room to see how my husband was doing.

For my hernia operation, they had the anesthesiologist call me the week before the surgery to do pre-op questions. My hospital uses a pool of anesthesiologists and you get assigned one. They do make sure you know who it is and mine called, showed up pre-op and post-op. She was very willing to discuss all the concerns I had.

Wally1960,

I met my anesthesiologist the morning of my surgery. I don't know that meeting him earlier would have made me feel any different. He went thorough the procedure, described what he would be doing, confirmed my allergies and medications (I am epileptic), and then ran through potential issues and how he would deal with them. As it turned out, all of the potential issues occurred and he addressed each as he said he would. I was comfortable going in and satisfied with his answers to my questions. If I would have been uncomfortable, I felt completely at ease asking my surgeon to clarify (both were with me at the same time during my prep).

Good luck and take it easy, you have an entire community here pulling for you.

Pat

When I went to the hospital in Amsterdam for assorted pre-op meetings with people one of them was "an" anaesthetist. He talked me through everything that would happen, re explaining what the surgeon had been through as well as telling me stuff for the first time about what the anaesthetist would do. But he said before all this explanation that there was no way of knowing which of the 13 anesthetists in the section would actually be the one doing the business for my surgery.

As it happened my actual aneasthetist came to see me in the prep room about 15 minuites beforehand and talked to me constantly about what was being done and what would be done, eg what the wiring was for, what the canuals were for, what substances he was injecting in me and why, as well as just chatting to me about who I was, to say nothing of swapping jokes and complimenting me on how good I looked as I was five years older than him and looked about ten years younger. We even had a sort of competition to get the rest of the team to try to guess my age before looking at my notes.

Others may want it different, buit this was just the way I needed to be treated, I thus felt very comfortable being wheeled into the theatre with him at myside talking. I looked up and said, "wow that's a big bright light" and then next thing I know I was talking to my wife several hours later.

But in addition to stats about the surgeon's record it can be worth checking what the hospital's record is too as complications during surgery and immediately after it often have much more to do with the whole team than the surgeon. Knowing specific names may not be as important as the overall stats.

Alf