Ambulatory surgery has increased in popularity in response to rising costs of inpatient hospital care. The technological developments in medicine, surgery, pharmacology and anaesthesia management also advanced ambulatory surgery. At present, 60– 70% of surgery in North America is performed on an ambulatory basis. The increasing number and complexity of operations being performed on an outpatient basis presents many unique challenges to the anaesthetists. The symposium on “Practical Issues in Outpatient Anaesthesia” was presented at the 1995 Annual Meeting of Canadian Anaesthetists’ Society in Ottawa, Ontario. The symposium was divided into three parts. The first part dealt with the management of postoperative pain and emesis in outpatients, the second part dealt with the practical infection control issues and the third part dealt with the practical discharge issues.