Many PACUs around the country are organized into a perioperative area (including all recovery areas), preoperative holding (PREOP), and the OR. Other hospitals consolidate the PACU with the critical care areas, and some exclude the OR from the perioperative area. Although the actual location of the care may vary from institution to institution, perianesthesia nursing care may be simply defined as all care that is provided to a patient before and after anesthesia. In contrast, perioperative nursing encompasses all nursing care received before, during, and after a procedure or surgery and comprises all three phases of care: preoperative, intraoperative, and postoperative.
Structuring the facility to include the single category of perioperative services typically means that one director will oversee the different units. This kind of organization usually leads to standardized policies, procedures, and charting methods and can foster better communication and integration between the different areas and their management teams.