Pre-admission Centre

The pre-admission centre has a team of specialist nurse practitioners who work closely with the anaesthetists to complete your pre-operative assessment prior to surgery. This is to ensure safety and prevent problems or delays on the day of surgery.

Pre-assessment online questionnaire

You may have already received a link by text message to complete an online pre-assessment questionnaire. This provides us with initial health information about you and helps us to understand what additional support you may need before your surgery. 

If you have not received this questionnaire, please don’t worry. We will go through the questions at your appointment.

You will need an assessment once your doctor decides that your surgery or procedure is necessary. 

A pre-operative assessment is done on everybody that requires surgery or a procedure under any type of anaesthetic, general anaesthetic, spinal, block, local anaesthetic, and sedation. 

The assessment is to check that you are well and fit enough to undergo the surgery or procedure, and to help determine which is the most suitable anaesthetic for you. 

A member of the team will contact you to book this assessment. You may not receive an appointment straight away after you have seen the doctor; you will be contacted for a pre-assessment closer to the date of your surgery.

Your appointment

You will have an allocated date and time for your assessment. Please arrive on time. Our department is based to the left-hand side of the hospital's main entrance.

Allow plenty of time for travel and parking as sometimes the car park can be busy. 

If you are more than 10 minutes late to your appointment, we may have to reschedule. 

Things to bring to your assessment

• Medication list. This is very important as some medications may have to be stopped before surgery. The nurse will go through this with you
• Any alert cards or additional information on any existing medical conditions
• Anaesthetic alert cards, such as difficult airway
• A list of questions you may have
• Urology patients will need to bring a urine sample. This should be brought in a clean, sterile sample pot which you can get from your GP surgery. If you don’t have an appropriate pot, one will be provided on arrival at the department 

If you need an interpreter

If you need an interpreter for your assessment, please let us know in advance so that we can arrange this for you.

We are unable to use family and friends as interpreters.

What to expect in your assessment

Once you arrive at our reception, a member of the team will check you in and confirm some details with you, including:

• name 
• address
• GP surgery
• phone numbers

You will then be called through by a healthcare support worker. They will check your:

• height
• weight
• body mass index (BMI)
• observations
• MRSA swabs 
• test your urine (Urology patients only).

After this, you will be seen by one of our specialist nurse practitioners. They will complete a general health assessment, take a list of medications from you, and do a physical examination (listening to your heart and lungs).  

After this you may also have some blood tests and an ECG performed.

The assessment can last between 1 and 2 hours.

You will be provided with some body wash and information to take home. These are about your anaesthetic and the day of surgery. 

After your assessment

Once you have seen your nurse and had any necessary tests, you will be able to go home. We will contact you if there is any other information we need from you. 

If we encounter any health problems that you were unaware of, we may refer you back to your GP or for further tests. These can include an echocardiogram (ECG) which is a scan used to look at your heart and nearby blood vessels. We may also need to do a breathing test, exercise test or book you for an appointment with an Anaesthetist. If you do need any of these, the nurse will go through these in detail with you. 

If you do not require further tests or follow-ups you will be declared fit for surgery and you won’t hear anything else from us. You will be contacted by the surgery booking team to book a day for your surgery.

Preparing for surgery

It is important that you prepare yourself for surgery. 

What you do now can have a big impact on your recovery. Fitter patients recover more quickly and are less at risk of developing complications. They are also less likely to have delays due to not being well enough for surgery.

The Royal College of Anaesthetists has information to help you prepare for your surgery:

• General information and resources for patients
• Patient information leaflets and video resources
• Preparing for surgery - Fitter Better Sooner
• Fitter Better Sooner general information