The Week

The lecture discussions will cover the basics of ACLS and acute care including airway management, hemodynamic instability and monitoring, dysrhythmias, shock, respiratory failure and monitoring, fluid management, neurologic failure and trauma. Workshops will include exposure to the techniques of intravenous access and mechanical ventilation, PC based learning and an exposure to critical care procedures in the operating room. An hour-long visit to the Pediatric intensive care unit will provide an opportunity for you to learn how to evaluate an ICU patient and become more comfortable with the ICU environment.

The human patient simulator is a novel approach to the teaching of critical care in a life-like manner on a full-scale simulated manikin. This manikin is unique because it has a hybrid lung model that actually consumes oxygen and exhales carbon dioxide. It also has pulses, breath sound, heart tones, reactive pupils; and, it reacts to the administration of medications with an appropriate response. It has scenarios that include management of a difficult airway, trauma, respiratory events such as pneumothorax, bronchospasm and pulmonary edema and a series of scenarios with shock of various etiologies. There are few of these human patient simulators being used in the 3rd year curriculum elsewhere in the United States. Based on our experience of 7 years of simulator use at UNC in the LSS1 and LSS2 courses, this would be an exceptional learning experience.

One morning you will visit the operating room as a venue for learning advanced life support and intensive care skills. In the operating room setting, you will be able to practice IV insertion, bag valve mask ventilation and endotracheal intubation. You will also be exposed to pain management techniques and the use of sedative hypnotic agents for sedation. These techniques will be useful no matter what field of medicine you enter.

Course Text

The course text, Fundamentals of Critical Care Support will be available for the students to purchase at a discounted price of $40. This is $14 less than the price given to Society of Critical Care Medicine members. The text is an excellent resource on basic acute care and includes an appendix section that has all of the updated ACLS algorithms and a manual of intensive care procedures. Texts are available for students to use but the texts must be turned in at the end of the week.

We hope that this course will provide an enjoyable and unmatched approach to learning intensive care and advanced life support skills. We are enthusiastic about the Fundamentals of Acute Care Course and look forward to seeing you.  Please contact us, Dr. Robert Kyle and Ms. Francis Smith; or Marietta Wagner, coordinator for the course, at (919) 966-5136, if you have any questions or problems with the scheduling of the course.