Preoperative site verification and surgical site marking are mandatory. A time-out should occur immediately before any invasive procedure. Confirming the correct patient and block site with a time-out should occur immediately before all regional anesthetic procedures. If more than one block is performed on one patient, it is recommended that time-out be repeated each time the patient position is changed or separated in time or performed by a different team. The anesthetic team should uniformly implement robust guidelines and checklists to reduce the occurrence of wrong-site regional anesthetic procedures.

This paper describes the implementation of the 'Stop Before You Block' (SB4YB) initiative in an Australian teaching hospital. This process, which began in the UK in 2010, is a pre-procedure pause to confirm the correct side of a regional anaesthetic block. A change in practice was implemented with the formal roll out of a SB4YB educational program. Use of the initiative was then audited over a subsequent three-month period. It was hoped that after implementing the initiative, at least 80% of blocks would have a site check performed. However, despite apparent support for the initiative, uptake was less than expected with only about 57% of blocks having a site check performed. A site check was less frequent if the block was done as an emergency procedure, outside of an operating theatre or by a locum or visiting anaesthetist. Our conclusion from the audit was that education is insufficient to promote a change in this practice. We propose that Stop Before You Block or a block time-out should be performed prior to all unilateral nerve blocks. Success of this initiative requires education, and both cultural and systems changes to occur. We propose that a formal block time-out should become part of the surgical safety checklist and this activity should be endorsed and promoted by anaesthetic professional bodies.

A telephone survey of cardiac anaesthetists and perfusionists at the 29 public hospitals providing adult cardiac surgical services in Australia and New Zealand was carried out between December 2019 and January 2020. The aim was to investigate current practice with regard to selected contentious elements of anaesthetic and perfusion management during cardiopulmonary bypass; primarily relating to bypass circuit priming, blood conservation methods and point-of-care coagulation testing. There was a 100% response rate. The average number of adult public cardiopulmonary bypass cases per hospital was 508 (160–1400). For cardiopulmonary bypass cases, ten hospitals (34%) routinely used a cell saver and the remainder used a cell saver selectively. Residual blood remaining in the cardiopulmonary bypass circuit was processed using a cell saver routinely in four hospitals (14%) and selectively in 23 (79%). Acute normovolaemic haemodilution was rarely used. Retrograde autologous priming was used routinely in seven hospitals (24%) and selectively in 16 (55%). All hospitals had access to point-of-care coagulation testing. The majority of hospitals targeted an activated clotting time of 480 s (range 400–500 s) prior to commencing cardiopulmonary bypass. There was marked geographic variation in access to fibrinogen concentrate. The cardiopulmonary bypass circuit prime solution was primarily a balanced crystalloid in most hospitals; however, there was significant variation regarding the addition of human albumin, mannitol, sodium bicarbonate and other medications. Many of the interventions examined were used on a case-by-case basis. These findings support the need for further research to define more evidence-based practice of these interventions.