The psychological signs of vulnerability
are evident to an experienced anaesthetic
nurse specialist who notes the nonverbal
signs of withdrawal, negative body
language, the look of fear on the patient’s
face, and also the obvious signs of
distress: crying and verbalisation of fears,
it would be beneficial to develop a tool
which measured vulnerability in relation to
exposure to perioperative risk and offered
guidelines to facilitate management of
individual cases. However, in reality this
would be highly subjective and challenging
due to the wide scope of the task and
it may be detrimental to the patient by
compounding their existing anxiety.