P142 Optimising theatre efficiency and utilisation: evaluating the role of a dedicated block room for upper limb surgery

<h3>Background and Aims</h3> We introduced a dedicated regional anaesthesia (RA) block room for upper limb orthopaedic surgery at an ambulatory care hospital in Glasgow, Scotland. This project assessed the block room impact on theatre utilisation, efficiency and resource allocation. <h3>Methods</h3> A retrospective review of 17 ‘pre-block room’ and 17 ‘block room’ lists was performed using theatre record data (Centricity Opera). Lists comprising entirely patients receiving surgical local anaesthetic infiltration only were excluded (n=5). Data on block performance was collected prospectively and analysed using Chi squared and students t-test where appropriate. <h3>Results</h3> The proportion of cases utilising the anaesthetist i.e. those requiring regional or general anaesthesia (GA) improved from 46.8% to 65.7% (p &lt;0.001). The proportion of GA cases fell from 73.5% to 11.8%, with a corresponding increase in awake RA cases from 26.5% to 88.2% (p &lt;0.001). Mean list duration increased by 21.6% (306 min to 372 min, p&lt;0.01), while overall proportion of time spent in theatre increased from 72.1% to 77.1% (p&lt;0.05). This was associated with a 42.9% reduction in mean transition time between cases (35 min to 20 min, p &lt;0.001). Mean time from block start to completion was 13 min 51s, with mean time to surgical anaesthesia 27 min 59s. Of 57 awake blocks performed only one patient required unplanned block supplementation. <h3>Conclusions</h3> The introduction of a block room significantly improved anaesthetist utilisation, shifted anaesthetic preference from GA to RA, and enhanced theatre efficiency and utilisation. These results support using a dedicated block room to optimise surgical workflows.