You don’t know how hard I had to look at perianesthesia nurses to spell it correctly in this, our little wander through the different nurse specialties. This one is all about looking after people before, and after they get anesthesia, usually as they get an operation of some kind (there are some diagnostic tests that require it as well).

Quite where you would be best placed on our EQSQ personality tests I’m not really sure: all of your patients will be either about to be unconscious or just coming round from being so. Anesthesia itself is a very complex technical area (over and above things like diabetics and so on requiring different amounts and possibly even different drugs, did you know that redheads need more anesthesia than other hair colors?) but then that’s what anesthesiologists are for. Your job is more in preparing and then caring for the patient as they come out of it.

I think actually that the primary requirement here would be a very convincing manner: “Yes, of course everything is going to be fine” as people slip into unconsciousness. The second would probably be empathy, meaning that you’d want t make sure you are from the female brain end of our personality tests. The reaction of the human body to recovery from an anesthetic is not pretty so you would need to have a strong desire to help people to deal with it.

Given the very nature of the process, this is one of the types of nursing which really only takes place in hospitals.