NHFPC: Hospitals should have outpatient anesthesia departments

On December 12, the National Health and Family Planning Commission (NHFPC), China’s health authority, issued the Circular on Introducing Outpatient Anesthesia Departments and Anesthesia Care Units by Medical Institutions (the Circular), calling on medical institutions, if possible, to introduce dedicated anesthesia departments for outpatients and set up anesthesia care units, with the aim of providing patients, including outpatients, with quality anesthesia services.

According to the NHFPC, the anesthesia department will be responsible for offering anesthesia and pain management services. These include eliminating or relieving the pain and discomfort caused by operation or other medical treatments, reducing adverse reactions, including stress reactions, during surgery or other treatment procedures, as well as monitoring patients’ conditions throughout the process to ensure treatment quality and patient safety.

Surgeons often get most of the credit for successful operations, but anesthesiologists are “behind-the-scene” heroes. Outpatient anesthesia departments will offer an opportunity for patients to talk to anesthesiologists face to face and allow anesthesiologists to assess anesthesia risk for surgery in advance.

A standard anesthesia department should have a team of qualified anesthesiologists and nurses, but the reality is: many anesthesiologists in China are at the same time nurses. If hospitals are to introduce anesthesia departments and care units extensively in the future, nurse anesthetists will be in great demand.

According to the Circular, to qualify as a nurse anesthetist, one must be a registered nurse, which means that he or she must have graduated from a nursing program, hold a nursing license, and have received anesthesia-related training and passed examinations as required.

Anesthesia care is still somewhat new in China, the availability of which varies from region to region. In light of the ongoing disagreement over how many nurse anesthetists a hospital should have, the Circular offered a standard — the number of nurses at a hospital’s anesthesia department should not be smaller than half of the hospital’s total operating tables.

The introduction of outpatient anesthesia departments is a major step in bringing anesthesiologists from behind the scene to the fore. In the future, as same-day surgery gains traction in the country, anesthesiologists are set to play a more notable role in the healthcare sector.