Use of a novel animal prototype to teach advanced airway management skills

Background: Airway management skills are a vital part of emergency medicine training. Mast ery of these skills requires didactic, model, and real-patient experiences. Practice with the use of relevant models greatly enhances these skills. Description: This study evaluated the effectiveness of deer heads as a novel, low-cost animal model for teaching 7 separate intubation procedures. Evaluation: One hundred and forty people at various levels of clinical training learned from 1 to 7 intubation techniques and practiced on the animal model. Each procedure was rated using a 5-point scale (excellent-poor) bit the quality of instruction associated with teaching the procedure and perceived usefulness of the model when compared with human patients. Conclusion: Combined results across all procedures showed that 94.8% believed the deer head models to be excellent, very good, or good models for demonstrating the techniques, (range of favorable responses across all techniques was 87.5% to 98.8%). Deer heads serve as good to excellent aids for practicing advanced airway management skills. They are readily available and free of-cost. This model-should be-considered in airway skills training. Copyright (C) 2005 by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.