Take-Home Cricothyrotomy Kit for Emergency Medicine Skills Training

Maintenance of basic competency in high acuity, low occurrence or "HALO" procedures in emergency medicine, such as cricothyrotomy, can be logistically challenging for emergency medicine providers. Over the last several decades, medical simulation has mitigated these learning gaps. Scheduling logistics and the soaring costs for skills-based training in medical simulation may significantly contribute to this problem in emergency medicine education in lower resource settings.

We have developed a "Take-Home Cric Kit" for members of our emergency medicine department in order to offer our faculty and residents a quality, low-cost task trainer and video-based guide for training in cricothyrotomy. It is available for all skill levels. In alignment with may core tenets of Adult Learning Theory, users may check out this kit, on a weekly basis, to meet their individual scheduling and learning needs for this critical skill.

We are currently piloting this training module with our emergency medicine faculty. Based on faculty feedback, we plan to offer the same training module to our emergency medicine residents. This take-home kit, including video tutorials, serves as a low-cost alternative to many commercially available task trainers for this skill. Long-range, we hope to build a library of low-cost training modules for a variety of "HALO" procedures in emergency care.

Utilization of a low-cost, take-home kit for skills-based training in cricothyrotomy will prevent the dreaded skill atrophy that may potentially accompany many "HALO" skills in emergency medicine. This kit may serve as a model for other educators and community providers as a means of skills maintenance in cricothyrotomy.

We have developed a low-cost take-home kit, including video-based tutorials, for skills training in cricothyrotomy. We hope that this kit is the first of many low-cost, take-home training modules for a variety of critical emergency medicine procedures. We would like to present this kit to members of the SAEM community and offer a step-by-step guide to development of this kit for any interested persons. Skills-based competency is a critical component of patient safety within the field of emergency care, at all levels of provider experience. Emergency medicine providers deserve better access to low-cost, quality resources for skills-based training. A take-home kit allows each learner to practice at their own pace, according to their own schedule. This is an asset rarely available with skills-based training in a traditional simulation center. The rapidly expanding field of 3D printing has revolutionized the availability of training models to facilitate this need. A quality task-trainer is virtually worthless, however, without a peer-reviewed, supplemental education module to guide the learner throughout the critical steps of any procedure. Our novel, take-home cricothyrotomy kit provides both convenience and quality learning and offers a model for other emergency medicine providers who are interested in skills-based competency within emergency medicine.