“When You Wake Up It'll All Be Over”: Communication in the Anaesthetic Room

This article focuses upon communication between medical professionals and patients within anaesthetic rooms—rooms in which patients are anaesthetized prior to entry into operating theaters. The most closely related field of sociological study is research on surgery, which tends to consider anaesthesia as a secondary specialism. Using video data collected from anaesthetic rooms and operating theaters in the United Kingdom, this article suggests that, while the processes that have been identified in surgery have some relevance for anaesthetic practice, there are important variations and differing interactional contingencies which need to be taken into account. In particular, the concept of “depersonalization” or “objectification” becomes particularly problematic in anaesthesia in ways that have not been broached in the study of surgery.