Health care is a complex interdisciplinary process. The perioperative process is illustrative of this, as patients are evaluated in the preoperative area, undergo procedures within the operating theater and are recovered in the PACU. During each step of the process, different health care professionals are accountable for ensuring patient safety. Subsequently, each profession has developed a professional society to deliberate and legislate guidelines to best care for patients. These perioperative societies include the Association of periOperative Registered Nurses (AORN), the American Society of PeriAnesthesia Nurses (ASPAN), the American College of Surgeons (ACS) and ASA. By soliciting feedback from these and other professional societies prior to publishing new guidelines, each society seeks to align their goals and optimize patient care by reducing local barriers to implementation of best practices and evidence-based medicine.
ASA’s approach to efficiently communicating and collaborating with other societies was to establish the Committee on Surgical and Procedural...
