Your stay in the recovery room
After surgery, you will be moved to the recovery room – also called the post-anaesthesia care unit, or PACU – while you recover from anaesthesia. How long you stay here will depend on how quickly you wake up and the type of surgery you have had, but this will typically be between 1 and 3 hours.
Your nurses will be your key contacts here, taking care of you while you are in the recovery room, closely monitoring your vital signs, examining your surgical incisions and ensuring that you are receiving enough fluids. They will also administer your pain relief; alternatively, if you have selected to manage your pain with a patient-controlled method of analgesia, your nurses will show you how to use it here.