The following guidelines are designed to assist anesthesiologists and organizations in developing a program for the delineation of clinical privileges in anesthesiology. The guidelines are meant to apply to physicians practicing anesthesiology within an organization that has a formal process for delineating privileges and a program of peer review that evaluates the clinical performance and patient care results of physicians who are granted clinical privileges in anesthesiology.
Anesthesiology is the practice of medicine.
Performance of preanesthetic, intra-anesthetic and postanesthetic evaluation and management are essential components of the practice of anesthesiology. Privileges in anesthesiology should be awarded on a time-limited basis, not to exceed two years. To be awarded medical staff privileges in anesthesiology, a physician must fully meet certain required criteria. It is possible to make all the following criteria mandatory or to have a mixture of required and optional criteria. Organizations should determine which criteria to include and whether to include additional criteria based on the institution's individual requirements and preferences.