ABSTRACT
This chapter offers the reader: Insight into the perioperative nursing environment; history and the present. It discusses the issues to give both undergraduate and newly graduated nurses a rich insight into the complexities, challenges and rewards of perioperative nursing. Perioperative settings are located in both public and private hospitals where surgical procedures are either elective/emergency or trauma. Major trauma facilities are located within larger public hospitals where trauma classification systems indicate the priority of treatment. Advances in surgery have been in conjunction with advances in anaesthetics science and pharmaceuticals. General anaesthesia is administered by anaesthetists, doctors who have undergone 12 years of training and are medical consultants in their own right. The anaesthetic nurse will sign the patient into the operating theatre after receiving a handover from the ward nurse. The circulating nurse is typically referred to as the scout nurse. The scout nurse is the link between the sterile and unsterile field.
