Clinical hours are defined in the Glossary of the 2004 Standards and PDS. Clinical hours include time spent in the actual administration of anesthesia (i.e., anesthesia time) and other time spent in the clinical area. Examples of other clinical time would include in-house call, preanesthesia assessment, postanesthetic assessment, patient preparation, operating room preparation, and time spent participating in clinical rounds. Total clinical hours are inclusive of total hours of anesthesia time; therefore, this number will be greater than the total number of hours of anesthesia time.
