Perianesthesia and Pacu Nursing Essentials

Recovering a patient from anesthesia demands more than recording vital signs. PACU nurses must recognize subtle airway compromise, interpret hemodynamic changes, distinguish expected anesthetic effects from deterioration, manage pain and nausea, and determine when a patient is genuinely ready to move safely to the next phase of care.

PERIANESTHESIA AND PACU NURSING ESSENTIALS is a clinically focused reference for nurses working across the perianesthesia continuum. It connects anesthesia principles with the bedside decisions nurses make before surgery, during immediate recovery, through ambulatory care, and at discharge.

The material follows the patient's actual perioperative journey, allowing you to understand not only what to monitor, but why findings change and when they require intervention or escalation.

Designed for practicing PACU nurses, nurses entering paranesthesia care, ambulatory surgery staff, nursing educators, and clinicians who want a stronger understanding of post-anesthesia recovery.

Build the clinical reasoning needed to recognize deterioration early and guide patients through recovery with greater confidence.

• Preoperative assessment and risk recognition, including airway, cardiovascular, respiratory, medication, allergy, frailty, and anesthesia-history evaluation
• Applied anesthesia pharmacology covering anesthetic agents, opioids, neuromuscular blockade, reversal medications, antiemetics, local anesthetics, and vasoactive therapy
• General, regional, neuraxial, and monitored anesthesia care with recovery implications for each technique
• Phase I PACU admission and structured handoff, primary assessment, monitoring priorities, and recovery scoring
• Airway and respiratory complications, including obstruction, laryngospasm, stridor, residual blockade, aspiration risk, and delayed emergence
• Hemodynamic instability, postoperative hypotension and hypertension, arrhythmias, hemorrhage recognition, and escalation
• Pain and postoperative nausea management using multimodal recovery principles
• Anesthesia emergencies, including malignant hyperthermia, local anesthetic systemic toxicity, anaphylaxis, and pulmonary complications
• Phase II and ambulatory recovery, discharge readiness, patient teaching, mobility, wound assessment, and caregiver preparation
• Pediatric, geriatric, bariatric, obstetric, and high-risk patients with population-specific recovery considerations
• Clinical images and illustrations that reinforce assessment, anatomy, equipment, monitoring, and recovery concepts
• More than 100 clinical procedure and teaching videos accessible through integrated QR-code resources for additional visual instruction