Day of Surgery
Sutter Davis Hospital

The day of surgery is filled with anticipation and anxiety. Finding your way and waiting for surgery contribute to the stress. Once surgery is underway, time seems to pass slowly as family and friends wonder about the outcome.

The following information will provide you with a better understanding of the process and why we ask you to arrive early on the day of surgery.

Finding Your Way to Sutter Davis Hospital
Print off the Sutter Davis Hospital map to help you find parking and where to go for surgery registration. All patients should check in at the Surgery Center registration.

Waiting for Surgery
Patients are asked to arrive one and a half hours in advance of their scheduled surgical time for two important reasons:

  1. It could take up to 40 minutes to get you ready for surgery. First, a nurse will evaluate your physical condition, have you sign a surgery consent form and have you change into a gown.
    The next step is to establish intravenous access (our nurses are experts at this) and review your paperwork to ensure that everything is in order.

  2. Occasionally, procedures take less time than anticipated; in which case we will be able to move up the time of your surgery. If that should occur, it is important that the preliminary steps have been completed.

  3. Your surgeon and anesthesiologist will visit you prior to your surgery and answer any last minute questions before you go to surgery.

We take your scheduled surgical time seriously and fully intend to honor that schedule. Experience has taught us, however, that it is wise to regard the scheduled surgical time as flexible. This means that your surgery could be performed early if a prior surgery took less time than planned or it could be late if the prior surgery ran late. We also want to let you know that emergencies could cause your surgery to be delayed.

We will keep you informed. Most surgeries occur within 30 minutes before or after the scheduled time. We consider surgery to be "late" if you wait 45 minutes after the scheduled time. We realize that this can be difficult for you and we are committed to updating you every 15-30 minutes on our progress.

Your comfort and well-being are very important to us. Please let us know if there is any other information we can provide as we want to provide you with VERY GOOD CARE .