The Royal College of Anaesthetists, the Faculty of Intensive Care Medicine, the Intensive Care Society and the Association of Anaesthetists have developed a joint strategy document on the resumption of planned surgery.
The group says maintaining staff and patient safety standards must be central to a return to planned surgery.
Suspending planned surgery freed up resources, including staff and critical care bed capacity, to deliver care for COVID-19 patients. Although a necessary step to take, this had the effect of delaying procedures for non-COVID-19 patients.
The organisations said: “Now that hospital admissions for COVID-19 are decreasing and critical care bed capacity is being released, steps can begin to be taken to resume planned surgery. However, no concrete timeframe can be assigned to returning to so-called ‘normal service’, and indeed COVID-19 will continue to impact how healthcare and treatments are delivered for some time to come.”
The new strategy document outlines four key categories that must be considered before elective surgery can resume: space, staff, stuff (equipment) and systems. A red-amber-green rating system for each category. A green rating would indicate:
- sufficient numbers of staff returning to routine work,
- sufficient anaesthetic and critical care drug stocks,
- sufficient supplies of and access to personal protective equipment, and
- sufficient intensive care and recovery unit spaces for non-COVID-19 surgery patients.
The document acknowledges that readiness will vary between regions, hospitals and surgical services, but equity of access to treatment must be considered.
