Administrators must prevent the overcrowding of the surgical schedule, primarily elective cases, to increase patient safety and ensure satisfaction of both patients and staff. Nurses are exposed to risks such as: incorrect documentation, wrong site, and even a wrong patient could be brought into the operating room. This happens when an excessive number of patients' are scheduled too close together in hospital based day surgery units, staff are pushed to stay on time. Most of the patients coming into the specialty areas for surgery, such as cataract procedures, are pushed through the system and they feel the rush. The older generation do not move quickly and this sometimes slows the process. The shorter surgery procedures move quickly and patients remain in their street clothing and, the reason for this, it better expedites preoperative, intraoperative and postoperative care. Administrators for surgical scheduling personnel need to educate their staff on the activities of surgical suites and, include knowledge of the size of the facilities surgical rooms. Scheduling should dictate the surgical schedule, and not let the surgeons retain control. Communication is a key issue with any surgical case, including supplies, which if specialty supplies are need then the surgeon needs to specify this need prior to the surgical procedure. This contributing factor manages to slow the procedure down due to the fact we are waiting supplies. The surgical scheduling system needs to add feasible times for turnaround between surgical cases, add more nursing staff per operating room and, surgeon to be asked to give adequate procedure times for their surgeries along with specialty supplies and equipment.
Some of the major problems in the area of surgical scheduling is the schedulers' are trying to place too many patients in surgical suites without allowing enough time between surgical procedures for room turn over.
