Day Surgery Center

Introduction: On June 6, 2019, our hospital officially established the Ambulatory Surgery Center. After nearly two years of development, the Ambulatory Surgery Center Ward was put into operation on March 18, 2021, changing the management of ambulatory-surgery patients throughout the hospital from the decentralized management model previously adopted to a centralized management model, thereby providing patients with higher-quality medical and nursing services. The Ambulatory Surgery Center Ward of our hospital is located on the 8th floor of Building 6. The ward covers an area of 1,468.93 m² and has 48 standard surgical beds equipped with complete monitoring equipment, as well as sufficient emergency equipment, for monitoring the vital signs of postoperative ambulatory-surgery patients and providing emergency support. The Ambulatory Surgery Center Ward is a platform-based ward open to the entire hospital. The Director of the Medical Affairs Department serves as the ward director and uniformly coordinates the implementation of ambulatory surgery, the development of the various surgical departments, disease-category review, physician qualification authorization, and other matters. There is one head nurse, responsible for implementing ambulatory-surgery management systems, the ward’s daily operation, personnel management, interdepartmental coordination, and other duties. There are six physicians, working on a rotating-duty basis; physicians with the rank of associate chief physician or above are selected from the various surgical departments to undertake the centralized management of ambulatory-surgery patients. There are 14 nurses, including 1 master’s graduate, 12 with bachelor’s degrees, and 1 with a junior-college diploma. They have relevant professional backgrounds in various surgical specialties and emergency-care experience, and extensive experience in perioperative care, health education, and specialized rehabilitation guidance for ambulatory-surgery conditions. The ward is the hospital’s first platform-based ward. It serves more than ten departments throughout the hospital and conducts more than 200 types of ambulatory-surgery procedures, providing strong medical and nursing support for the centralized management of ambulatory-surgery patients. Enhanced recovery treatment and nursing are implemented: 22.79% of patients “undergo surgery in the morning and are discharged in the afternoon,” and 97.94% of patients are discharged within 24 hours. Department Honors: The Ambulatory Surgery Center of the First Affiliated Hospital of Xiamen University, as an advanced national example of improving medical services from 2018 to 2020, received a commendation circular from the National Health Commission. The “Full Closed-Loop Management System for Ambulatory Surgery of the First Affiliated Hospital of Xiamen University” stood out among 574 participating cases in the final round of the East China division of the 2019 National Hospital Competition for Improving Medical Services (City Category) and won the only Gold Award. Building a “Four-Saving Ward”: saving money, saving time, reducing worries, and reducing effort. The “Four-Saving” Ward was selected as a recommended case in the Xiamen Municipal Health Commission’s 2021 “I Do Practical Things for the People” initiative. Ambulatory Surgery Center operational cases: Three projects—the professional training model for the medical and nursing team of the Ambulatory Surgery Center Ward, the application of PDCA to reducing the rate of deficiencies in preoperative preparation among ambulatory-surgery patients, and the construction of a medical-support system for the Ambulatory Surgery Center Ward—won Excellent Case awards at the First National Forum on Quality and Safety Management of Ambulatory Medical Care.