Background and objective: Department of anesthesiology, Faculty of Medicine, Khon Kaen University, serve the anesthesia service obta in and out official times. So, we want to evaluate duration in each period that indicated anesthesia service and find the strategies to improved anesthesia service.

Methods: We prospectively collected data from all surgical cases scheduled during official hours at operating room of Srinagarind hospital, Faculty of Medicine, Khon Kaen University in February, 2010. Data included the length of times utilized in each periods of the anesthesia service, the OR nurse service, and the surgeon service. We also recorded problems that found, their causes, and number of cases operated beyond the official hours period. Then we analyzed and reported the data as median (min-max) and mean (SD) as appropriated.

Results: We included 702 patients from 12 operating rooms. The average number of cases in each OR per days was 3 (1,8) (median (min-max)) with durations used for anesthesia preparation, anesthesia ending, surgical preparation, and surgical end of 15 (1-85) min, 5 (0-70) min, 10 (0-75) min, and 2 (0-20) min, respectively. We found problems that associated with anesthesia service cause from anesthesia team, OR nurse, surgeon, and others were 106, 35, 94, and 27 items, respectively.

Conclusion: We found the opportunities to improved the efficiency of anesthesia service. This improvement required a joint development of the hospital system.