Use of a novel animal prototype to teach advanced airway management skills

Airway management skills are a vital part of emergency medicine training. Mastery of these skills requires didactic, model, and real-patient experiences. Practice with the use of relevant models greatly enhances these skills.

This study evaluated the effectiveness of deer heads as a novel, low-cost animal model for teaching 7 separate intubation procedures.

One hundred and forty people at various levels of clinical training learned from 1 to 7 intubation techniques and practiced on the animal model. Each procedure was rated using a 5-point scale (excellent-poor) on the quality of instruction associated with teaching the procedure and perceived usefulness of the model when compared with human patients.

Combined results across all procedures showed that 94.8% believed the deer head models to be excellent, very good, or good models for demonstrating the techniques (range of favorable responses across all techniques was 87.5% to 98.8%). Deer heads serve as good to excellent aids for practicing advanced airway management skills. They are readily available and free of cost. This model should be considered in airway skills training.