Posted by Matthew Mac Partlin on Wednesday, January 23, 2013



Airway management can be a cause of great stress in the well apportioned and resourced resus bay of an ED or an ICU or in an operating theatre. The stress factor is magnified in the pre-hospital environment where the conditions and elements may operate against you. This can be even worse if you are working with people and equipment that you are unfamiliar with, as is not uncommon at motorsport events.

So it's always worth seeing how the civilian pre-hospital and retrieval experts approach this challenging intervention. The Greater Sydney HEMS Service has established itself as an opinion and practice leader in pre-hospital clinical, logistic and research activities and so when they produce educational and training material, I'd advocate having a listen.

Recently, their Medical Director, Dr. Karel Habig, produced a good 22-minute presentation on the preparation and approach to pre-hospital RSI, along with links to some of their resources. You will be faced with this at some point if you practice enough motorsport medicine, so follow the link and check it out. As usual, comments are invited below.

Rapid Sequence Intubation in Retrieval Medicine