Effectiveness of the Essential Critical Care Concepts in Emergency Medicine: Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation and...

In the emergency department, emergency medicine (EM) physicians should be familiar with advanced cardiovascular devices, such as extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO), intra-aortic balloon pumps (IABPs), and resuscitative endovascular balloon occlusion of the aorta (REBOA) catheters. Therefore, we developed a module to help learners integrate these modalities in the acute care setting to enhance patient care.

Third- and fourth-year medical students interested in EM, as well as EM interns, participated in the module during their Introduction to Critical Care in EM course. The session involved a 60-minute flipped classroom online curriculum. Students received prerecorded lectures and PDF materials before the session. Students had to pass a premodule knowledge quiz and complete a postmodule quiz using 5-point Likert scales (1 = strongly disagree, 5 = strongly agree) assessing the module's effectiveness.

Thirty students provided overwhelmingly positive feedback, indicating that the module effectively taught the basics of advanced devices and how the devices apply to EM and critical care (each, median score 5). Participants expressed increased confidence in managing IABPs, ECMO, and REBOA (each, median score 5). Free-text comments highlighted that the material was challenging but helpful. Students' premodule median knowledge score was 2 (interquartile range [IQR] 2-3), versus a median score of 4 (IQR 4-4) postmodule (p < .001).

This advanced cardiovascular device module offers a structured approach to teaching ECMO, IABP, and REBOA cardiovascular management to students interested in EM. Our module effectively addressed the educational gap and helped students achieve the learning objectives.