Strategies for improving anesthesia ready time in the obstetric operating room

Institutional review board (IRB) approval was obtained (protocol includes waiver of informed consent, Human Subjects Research, University of Miami). The following interventions were applied: (1) placing standard ASA monitors in the preoperative holding area by the senior resident when performing his/her preoperative assessment, (2) simultaneous OR set up by the junior resident before bringing the patient into the OR, and (3) keeping the patient in the sitting position upon transfer to the OR bed while connecting the ASA monitors, obtaining fetal heart rate monitoring, and starting skin preparation for the neuraxial block. [...]there was a statistically significant decrease in time to anesthesia ready for surgery from 35 to 26 min (p ≤0.001).