At Central Surgery, we maintain a policy against prescribing any form of sedation for patients undergoing scans or investigations in a hospital setting. It is the responsibility of the clinician undertaking the investigation to prescribe the required medication and they are legally responsible for any adverse reaction or outcome.
When prescribing any medication, we have to consider and balance the benefits against the risks. We deem it clinically unsafe to prescribe this medication in general practice as patients can respond differently to sedatives and can either become over sedated or have a reaction. Due to this, it is in the patients best interest to have this medication prescribed and monitored by the hospital clinician who has clinical responsibility at the time of the investigation.
The Royal College of Radiologists has published its own guidance “Safe Sedation and analgesia in the radiology department (2018)”, which in its summary states:
“Sedation techniques, together with good analgesia and sympathetic, supportive patient management can improve the patients’ experience by minimising the negative effects of the intervention and optimising patient outcome.
Safe and effective analgesia and sedation should be delivered by an appropriately trained and credentialed team with good access to anaesthetics, pre-procedure assessment, sedation plan and checklist, with appropriate monitoring and availability of resuscitation equipment and reversal agents”.
This document can be found online at: