3 hours before surgery: Why are you supposed to be there so early? What do they do for those 3 hours?

Thanks for your question. They have you get to the hospital hours before your procedure for a few reasons. Most importantly, they want to make sure that everything is done for you on time, so that if there's any delays in getting you into the OR, it's definitely not going to be anything with you. So during that time, you'll be checked in (paper work), you'll talk to a nurse (more paper work), talk to the anesthesia team (you know it, more paper work), get changed, get an IV started (no paper work here), meet briefly with your surgeon to go over last minute questions and details, talk to the team of nurses who will be in the OR with you, then you're off!Congrats to your sister and good luck to you!

There is some sitting around a bit but they want enough time to check in, register, get an IV, talk with anesthesiologist, etc. Sometimes we need a little extra time if a patient needs an EKG or a finger-prick glucose or Hemoglobin test, but that's a more rare case. In those cases, we always want enough time so that we don't run behind. Our surgical days are very full and being on-time requires a lot of effort. Hope this help!