Perioperative Daily Add-On Case Triage Log

It covers the intake and triage of same-day or short-notice surgical add-on requests, including case details, clinical urgency, requested timing, and the assigned OR slot or disposition. It is meant to document the decision path from request to scheduling outcome. It does not replace the surgical schedule, anesthesia record, or patient chart. Use it as the working log for the perioperative coordinator or charge nurse.

Use it daily, and update it whenever a new add-on request arrives or the status changes. In many departments, it functions as a live log throughout the shift rather than a once-per-day form. If your volume is high, keep one log per day or per service line so the queue stays readable. The key is that each request gets a clear timestamped decision trail.

The perioperative coordinator usually owns the log, with input from the charge nurse, surgeon, anesthesia, and bed or OR control as needed. The DRI should be the person who can confirm urgency, check capacity, and assign or escalate the case. If your site uses a different operational owner, the template can be reassigned at import time. The important part is that one person maintains the source of truth.

It supports scheduling and triage documentation, not independent clinical decision-making. The urgency classification should reflect the clinical input already provided by the surgeon or responsible clinician, then be translated into an operational priority. That keeps the log aligned with workflow while avoiding scope creep. If a case is unstable or unclear, the log should show it as blocking and escalated.

The most common mistakes are vague urgency labels, missing timestamps, and assigning a slot before confirming OR readiness. Another frequent issue is combining multiple actions into one note instead of recording each checklist item separately. Teams also sometimes mark everything as critical, which makes the label less useful. A good log keeps each request independently verifiable and easy to review later.

Ad-hoc communication is fast, but it is easy to lose the request order, miss a status change, or forget why a case was deferred. This template creates a single queue with explicit priority, assignment, and verification steps. That makes handoffs cleaner across shifts and reduces ambiguity when multiple add-ons compete for the same room. It also gives you a reviewable record of what was decided and when.

Yes. You can add service-specific fields such as specialty, required equipment, isolation status, or anesthesia constraints. You can also adapt the urgency labels to match your local policy, as long as the categories stay consistent across the team. For multi-site groups, it is often useful to clone one version per campus or service line. That keeps the log aligned with how each unit actually schedules.

It pairs well with the main OR schedule, bed management, anesthesia readiness checks, and turnover tracking. The log can also feed a handoff note or a daily huddle summary if your workflow needs one. If your team uses Kanban-style capacity management, the assigned slot and blocking status map cleanly to that process. The template is most useful when it sits between request intake and final room assignment.