Improving paediatric and newborn life support training by the use of modified manikins allowing airway occlusion

Manikins currently used in newborn and paediatric resuscitation training are limited in their effectiveness by an inability to allow instructors control over airway patency. This means that attempts to introduce situations that require interventions, other than just appropriate head positioning to achieve successful lung inflation, into training or testing scenarios are compromised by the obvious visual cue of the manikin's chest movement which may occur even when the head is incorrectly positioned. This report describes a modification to manikins, which allows such control and discusses its use in improving the effectiveness of teaching and the learning experience.