OPERATING ROOM NURSING

OVERVIEW

Operating Rooms facilities within the Royal Adelaide Hospital currently are fragmented between four specialist areas. However, with planned development it is expected to collocate all these facilities in one large area.

Specialist Theatre areas include:

• General Operation Room
• Emergency Surgical Suite
• Cardiothoracic Surgical Suite
• Burns Operating Room

The Operating Room Service, as a Service Unit, currently provides nursing management of only the General Operating Room and the Emergency Surgical Suite.

GENERAL OPERATING ROOMS

Within the General Operating Room Complex are situated 14 separate operating rooms. These facilities are utilised from 0800 - 1700 hours and are used mainly for elective surgery.

• Day Surgery procedures are carried out in two of these operating rooms, however an increasing number of these procedures are being scheduled on the booked elective speciality lists.
• Cystoscopy procedures are carried out in two specially equipped procedure rooms.
• One operating room is specifically maintained for neurosurgical procedures of a 24 hour basis.
• ENT surgery also has its own specific operating room.
• Elective orthopaedic surgery is carried out in two operating rooms with an Orthopaedic Trauma operating room allocated within the Emergency Surgical Suite daily.

All other operating rooms are used for other surgical specialities on a rotational basis. Currently, over 16,000 surgical procedures are completed per year in this facility.

EMERGENCY SURGICAL SUITE

This operating room suite provides a 24 hour service in conjunction with the RAH Accident & Emergency and Retrieval Teams and associated allied health groups.

Routinely, two operating rooms are available for emergency and semi-elective type procedures. A third theatre is available at all times if required.

A unique education program for nursing staff in this area was developed to provide expert surgical assistance when none was available from medical staff.

For any information on these two areas, contact Ms. Kim Hepper or any specialist staff:

Telephone + 61 8 8222 4302 Fax + 61 8 8222 5943