How many patients have you intubated this year?

[1EMT-P]

I recently went to an airway management class with 40 other providers. The instructor ask how many of us had intubated a patient this year. Only 5 out of 40 providers had intubated a patient. This class had a mix of Paramedics, Flight Medics & Flight Nurses in the class. The biggest reason given for not intubating was that BLS providers had placed alternative airways.

Edited September 15, 2015 by 1EMT-P

[Bernhard]

2015, until now: 2 ET, ~5 supraglottic myself. Assisted when partners applied one on a few more. And I have an office job...

Primarily I choose the supraglottic (we use Larynxtubus here), ET only when supraglottic doesn't work for some reason.

On one instance my supraglottic AND ET attempt wasn't succesful, so this is not counted above. HEMS doctor eventually was able to push another one in after several tries. We got a fairly good CO2 reading, but it didn't help: hospital later diagnosed a high c-spine fracture and totally confused airway situation, pronounced dead in the ER (44 y/o motorcyclyst, head against street sign post as we found out later).

[rock_shoes]

To be honest I've stopped counting. I did 3 in just my last block of work (4 days on 4 days off) which is fairly common; so I'm willing to estimate a conservative 20+ this year. I work in a targeted service so I end up doing the pre-hospital intubations for an entire zone as opposed to a single unit.

For those who don't have similar working opportunities, the body of evidence supporting high fidelity simulation practice and its resultant increase in first pass success is becoming quite clear. Practice, either on a manikin or a patient, breeds a higher degree of success.

Edited November 13, 2015 by rock_shoes