Perioperative fasting
Welcome to this resource about perioperative fasting from the Royal College of Nursing.
Our aim is to improve care for patients and reduce variations in clinical practice.
The resource offers support to all those involved in this effort. It brings together what we know from the evidence on this topic and guidance on how to put this knowledge into practice. You can find your way around the resource using the left hand menu. The section on How to use this site provides you with an overview of the six main sections within the resource.
The national clinical guideline on perioperative fasting has been produced by the Royal College of Nursing in collaboration with key organisations for use in the NHS and the independent sector.
The national guideline provides recommendations for good practice, based upon the best available evidence of clinical effectiveness, and is intended to provide key source material for developing local guidelines. Recommendations for healthy and high risk adults and healthy and high risk children are presented in the guideline section.
This guideline has been endorsed by:
- Royal College of Anaesthetists
- Association of Paediatric Anaesthetists of Great Britain and Ireland
- Royal College of Midwives
- Preoperative Association
- British Association of Day Surgery.
Guideline review
This version of the clinical guideline for perioperative fasting will be updated in line with the update of Cochrane systematic reviews on preoperative fasting for adults to prevent perioperative complications and preoperative fasting for children to prevent perioperative complications which are currently in process. It is anticipated that these will be published in early 2013.
If you have any comments or enquiries regarding this resource please contact us at: qualityandsafety@rcn.org.uk.