Critically Ill Airway Precourse Videos

Here are the free-to-access precourse video resources that are highly recommended for participants of the Critically Ill Airway course, run by The Alfred ICU and Monash University. The videos lectures are all FOAM (free open-access meducation) created by our external course consultants such as Rich Levitan (@airwaycam) and Reuben Strayer (@EMUpdates), as well as our course instructors Lloyd Roberts (@bearsnowstorm), Tim Leeuwenburg (@kangaroobeach) and Brent May (@docbrent). Also highly recommended is Just a routine operation, featuring Martin Bromiley talking about the human factors that led to the death of his first wife, Elaine, from a preventable airway crisis.

• Approach to Airway Management by Richard Levitan (from Big Sick 2018) – this is a distillation of the Levitan approach to airway management, which is advocated on this course. He discusses ear-to-sternal notch positioning, dynamic head lift, external laryngeal manipulation, epiglottoscopy, apnoeic oxygenation and the differences between direct and video laryngoscopy among other important concepts.
• The Art and Science of Extubation by Lloyd Roberts. Lloyd, an intensivist and anaesthetist, provides a comprehensive overview of extubation assessment and management in critical care patients.
• Being Expert Enough by Tim Leeuwenburg. Tim, a GP anaesthetist on Kangaroo Island and CIA course instructor, discusses his approach to ‘being expert enough’ as an ‘occassional intubator’ who manages critically ill patients.
• Airway lessons from the Austere Environment by Brent May. Brent is an anaesthetist, retrievalist, motorsports physician and CIA course instructor. This talk discusses lessons from remote and prehospital environments that can be applied to all airway management scenarios.
• Airway Strategies: Why you need one, how to get one by Stuart Marshall. Stu is an anaesthetist with a PhD in Human Factors. In an interactive video he shows how an airway expert develops strategies for airway management using 3 specific cases. Comment on the cases and your strategies at LITFL.com.
• Effective ventilation in 11 minutes by Reuben Strayer. Reuben is a New York-based emergency physician and external consultant for the CIA course. He emphasises that effective ventilation and oxygenation are the priority in airway management, and that this can be best achieved by two-handed bag-mask technique or by using an LMA.

Find out more about the Critically Ill Airway course here.