A two-day Dunedin conference attracting 120 post-anaesthetic care nurses reflects the emerging recognition of this nursing specialty, one of the organisers, Shirley Fraser, says.
Mrs Fraser, a Southern District Health Board post-anaesthetic care nurse who has worked in that area for 27 years, said it was the group's fifth national annual conference and the first time the conference had been held in Dunedin.
It was also the first time an international speaker had been involved.
An expert in the field, Pam Windle of Texas, will address the conference several times, covering topics which include the definition of a perianesthesia nurse, mentoring, nurse-physician collaboration and safety.
Mrs Fraser said the role of post-anaesthetic care nurses was to keep people safe during the time they were emerging from anaesthesia.
This included providing good post-perative pain relief and catering for many different specialties.
Nurses who specialised in this area would have broad skills and often came from a surgical nursing background.
Safety was a large part of the role, to the extent United States coroners had described post-anaesthetic care units as the most important areas in hospitals because of the "potential for things to go wrong" in recovery, she said.
Satisfaction in the job came from knowing "you have achieved the best possible recovery for someone".
Anaesthesia was so much more comprehensive today and "tailor made" for individual patients, which meant patients woke much earlier and did "remember being in our unit".
That did not used to be the case, Mrs Fraser said.
Other speakers at the conference, which is being held at Dunedin Public Art Gallery today and tomorrow, include medical ethicist Prof Grant Gillett of the University of Otago, clinical leader of Dunedin Hospital's pain clinic Dr David Jones and Dunedin Hospital director of anaesthesia Dr Paul Templer.
