This is a classroom-based one-day course using a workbook and cases to cover hundreds of learning points in over 50 critical care cases. It is fast paced, interactive and fun and uses extensive multimedia, stories and humour to get some serious points across. There are NO boring traditional PowerPoint slides and you won’t fall asleep!

Cardiac arrest & post-resuscitation care

  • How do we assess and manage intubated patients?
  • Approach to monitoring in resus
  • Structured approach to managing a critical care case (for real and for exams)
  • Anaesthetic agents we can use
  • Establishing the patient on the portable ventilator
  • Post-cardiac arrest care (heart and brain)
  • Prognostication
  • Some of the issues that come up dealing with cardiology, radiology, and ICU in cases like this

Airway Management

  • Optimising bag-mask ventilation, laryngoscopy, and supraglottic insertion
  • Discussing the pros and cons of intubating a diverse selection of cases – getting the indications clear
  • Rescue techniques in difficult laryngoscopy
  • The meaninglessness of so much airway terminology and busting dogma
  • The whole point of RSI
  • Optimal RSI preparation for different medical scenarios in adults & kids
  • Video review of ED RSI cases with group critique – how can we make it perfect?
  • Cool peri-intubation oxygenation strategies
  • Simplified and safe approach to RSI drugs, and what we do and don’t know from the evidence
  • Alternatives to RSI that are achievable in the ED

Respiratory Failure and Ventilation

  • A structured approach to choosing therapy
  • When and how to use CPAP and BiPAP
  • Optimising medical therapy for respiratory failure
  • Predicting NIV failure
  • The crashing asthma patient
  • Resolving arguments about oxygen therapy
  • Troubleshooting the patient on a portable ventilator
  • Do we need anaesthetic machines in the resus room?

Shock states, vascular access, and monitoring

  • Why shock is more interesting and important than airway or breathing problems
  • Why hypotension and PEA are the same thing
  • Getting rid of the Hs and Ts
  • When you can relax about a low BP
  • Choosing the right fluid
  • Assessing volume responsiveness
  • How using basic echo saves lives more quickly than relying on your (crappier than you realise) clinical skills
  • Vascular and osseous access options when it’s urgent
  • Simplifying vasoactive therapy so starting ‘inotropes’ in the ED is a piece of cake
  • Bradycardia kung fu
  • ED approach to cardiogenic shock
  • The next big thing: mechanical and extracorporeal therapies

Neuroprotection in acute CNS disease

  • How to kill a cockroach
  • Keeping neurones happy – the guide to a neuroprotective strategy
  • Protecting the brain from secondary injury and from the junior airway practitioner
  • Refractory seizures
  • Shocking shunt shenanigans
  • Osmotherapy options
  • Should an emergency physician ever ‘crack the head’?

Sepsis

  • What happened to SIRS? The latest sepsis guidelines
  • Explaining qSOFA and new definitions
  • Sneaky sepsis syndromes that come up in exams
  • The hardest to find critically ill patient in the ED
  • Stabilising the septic shock patient

Major Trauma

  • Critical care management of burns
  • Penetrating trauma dilemmas
  • RSI in the trauma patient and resolving arguments over the airway
  • Chest trauma dogmalysis
  • Evolving paradigms on shock management
  • Haemorrhage control techniques
  • Life, limb and sight-saving procedures and how to prepare for them

Next course Friday 9 December 2022, London, UK.

Register here

Resuscitation Medicine from Dr Cliff Reid