[lettie]

Aaaah.... It is now a little clearer. If you have medical problems such as Asthma or Cardiac problems, you need to be assessed by an anaesthetist prior to anaesthetic. This used to routinely occur the night before an op but depending on the schedule of the anaesthetist, may have been the same morning. We found that if we brought patients in the night before, they were less likely to get missed. Anaesthetists can be called away for emergency operations etc, so aren't always available the night before. Sometimes they do their assessments first thing in the morning before the theatre list starts. This makes more sense as there are more of them about during the day (there is usually only one on call in the evening and at night for general surgery, one for ICU and one for gynae/maternity). There are loads during the day due to scheduled operations, so it is easier for them to do their assessments in the morning.

It may be that the staff were unclear about when your anaesthetist would be available. It is difficult to bleep and ask them as they cannot leave an anaesthetised patient to answer the phone. During the day, some anaesthetists are scheduled to do the planned operations and some are on call for emergencies, so, although they help at the planned ops, they keep themselves relatively free to answer their emergency calls. If your anaesthetist was scheduled to be with planned ops, the clinic staff wouldn't have been able to contact him/her. It's no good contacting the emergency person with a query, each anaesthetist works differently so the emergency person may not have been able to answer the question.
the clinic staff were probably thinking that they'd be on the safe side and bring you in the night before.