Developing competency in interns for endotracheal intubation: An educational article

Our existing undergraduate curriculum lacks developing competency for endotracheal intubation. Even though it is a lifesaving procedure, interns are exposed only during their posting in anesthesia or emergency medicine and so, when need arises, they fail to perform endotracheal intubation and it leads to catastrophes.

The aim of this study was to develop competency in interns for endotracheal intubation.

A study was conducted on fifty interns of medical college. Lecture and demonstration were used for cognitive domain and one-to-one training and practice on manikin for affective and psychomotor domains, respectively. Live demonstration on patients was done whenever possible. Gain in knowledge was evaluated by pre- and post-test using standardized validated questionnaire. Skills were assessed by direct observation of procedural skill on manikin, split in steps: Laryngoscopy, intubation, and ventilation. Session was evaluated using feedback questionnaire and Likert scale.

Interns showed mean marks of 8.12 ± 1.63 in pretest compared to 13.86 ± 1.06 of posttest with a gain of 34.8% (P = 0.0001), which is highly significant. Twenty-two percent interns completed all steps correctly in the first attempt, 62% in the second attempt, while 16% required third attempt to correctly complete all steps.

This training developed competency for basic knowledge and practice of endotracheal intubation in interns adequately on manikin. Training for endotracheal intubation should be carried out at the beginning of internship before they go for clinical practice and repeated during their rotation of Anesthesia and Emergency Medicine Department, so they can retain their competency for it and can do later on whenever required.