Anticipating and Treating the Most Common Complications of Prehospital Intubation

There's one specific psychomotor skill that still carries more clout than almost anything else in EMS. It's the skill that's too often used as a means of measuring adequacy, expertise, competence and ability: endotracheal intubation (ETI). As a profession, EMS affords ETI some bizarre form of idolatry. The ability, opportunity and permission to place a piece of plastic into someone's mid-trachea is, for whatever reason, considered the gold standard of practice. The actual skill itself can be successfully performed in a few simple steps, but it's by no means easy. After all, there are a host of circumstances that make ETI an extremely tenuous and sometimes treacherous maneuver: patient condition, anatomy, secretions, provider experience, environment, induction-agent access/selection, etc. When we're able to overcome all of these factors and successfully take control of and protect a patient's airway, there's certainly a well-deserved sense of accomplishment in that. But if we think of ETI in terms of its context, not just its execution, it's fair to assume that the esteem comes more from the situations surrounding the actual skill, rather than the actual intubation itself. The authority that this skill affords us is very powerful, and the public and medical community trusts us with this power. But with such power comes even greater responsibility. As such, it's important that we're armed with tools to help us recall proper ETI procedures and facilitate successful tube placeme...
Source: JEMS Patient Care - Category: Emergency Medicine Authors: Tags: Airway & Respiratory Source Type: news