Teaching Student Nurse Anesthetists to Respond to Simulated Anesthetic Emergencies

Background: Life-threatening complications occur during anesthetic administration and student nurse anesthetists must know how to diagnosis and treat emergencies. Using high-fidelity simulation is one teaching method. Purpose: This study compared if exposing students to the same performance criteria in simulated life-threatening anesthetic emergencies at three different intervals was statistically different from students who experienced the scenarios once. Method: Using a checklist of required actions to diagnosis and treat the emergency, two faculty members documented the responses of the control group (n = 6) and study group (n = 6) as they performed the same 13 scenarios. Results: Overall, the study group performed better on their third attempt at the scenarios than the control group who only performed the scenarios once. Conclusions: Repeating anesthetic scenarios improves the overall outcomes for students in the simulated lab environment, but the financial impact must be considered if the required curriculum changes are to become sustainable. Further studies are needed to explore alternative teaching methods such as asynchronous computerized scenarios as a supplement to high-fidelity simulation. (C) 2017 International Nursing Association for Clinical Simulation and Learning. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.