What is Perioperative Care?

CPOC = better care - best outcomes

What is perioperative care?

To both patients and the public, the phrase 'perioperative care' may be unfamiliar.  And yet, it should be a normal and fundamental part of the healthcare process within the NHS.

So what does it actually mean?

The word 'peri' means around and 'operative'  means surgery. So Perioperative care refers to the care that a patient should get as they journey from the GP surgery (when they may be referred to hospital)  right the way through to the moment they are back home recovering.

Patients will meet lots of different healthcare professionals during their journey to get better. These can include GP’s, Nurses, Surgeons, physiotherapists and Anaesthetists. Because these people often work in different departments or even hospitals, perioperative care is a way to help these people work seamlessly together to make sure the patient gets the best care possible. This is essentially what we mean by successful perioperative care.  Here is an image showing some of the healthcare professionals patients may meet:

What does it mean for you (the patient)?

It means you now have a good understanding of what perioperative care is and the different health professionals you are likely to interact with along the way, it would be a good time to visit your perioperative journey page where you will find numerous recommendations and suggestions on how to prepare for surgery.   You may also want to start thinking about what you can do to aid recovery from surgery by making positive changes to your lifestyle.  Take some time to watch the animated film below to see what good perioperative care can look like.

Animated film 

To see what good perioperative care can look like, please watch our animated film (first published in 2015) and follow our patient ‘Doug’ along his surgical pathway:

Please watch Perioperative Medicine - Pathway to Surgical Care (Welsh Language) here