Continuing Education for the Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetist: Ultrasound-Guided Peripheral Intravenous Access

Vascular access is critical in the perioperative arena and is a requirement for most surgical procedures. The goals of this project were to increase knowledge among certified registered nurse anesthetists (CRNAs) by providing a focused didactic and simulation course on ultrasound-guided peripheral intravenous access and to assess the confidence and comfort levels of performing ultrasound-guided peripheral intravenous access before and after the course. A combined didactic and simulation ultrasound-based education course was developed to train CRNAs in ultrasound-guided peripheral intravenous access. The training module consisted of a didactic presentation followed by a simulation with fabricated and human models. All participants showed competency during the training course by identifying upper extremity and lower extremity sonographic vascular anatomy on a human model and performing ultrasound-guided intravenous access on fabricated models. Mean correct pretest response was 1.57 (95% confidence interval) compared with 3.53 (95% confidence interval) on the posttest. The findings show improvement in performance of ultrasound-guided peripheral intravenous access by CRNAs after a focused ultrasound education session. [.