Specially designated recovery areas are essential

The Confidential Enquiries into Maternal Deaths and the National Confidential Enquiries into Perioperative Deaths regularly emphasise the clinical problems associated with recovery from anaesthesia.1 2 Despite their proliferation over the past few decades recovery rooms--designated places for sole occupancy by patients who have just had operations--are not always fully staffed with competent people when they are needed, and equipment may be missing. Why should this be? Why is it that one in seven patients dying perioperatively could not be admitted to a special area for their care because no recovery room apparently existed?2 Other patients who subsequently died were denied access because the unit was closed or …