ECCC Financial Aid Makes Difference for Ventilation Course

The Emory Critical Care Center's financial support made an impact for trainees attending the "NIH Fundamentals of Mechanical Ventilation" course this year. The aid allowed course leaders to purchase test lungs, create handout booklets, and covered the initial start-up costs associated with the program.

The course included one day of zoom lectures with presentations from participating sites across the country before allowing trainees the opportunity to run their own hands-on portion for three full days. The hands-on portions included lectures with small-group discussions, breakout sessions with test lungs and ventilators as well as computer-based simulations.

Major topics covered included an introduction to the equation of motion and natural decay, application of those equations to basic ventilator modes, the effects of patient effort on ventilator waveform analysis and patient-ventilator dyssynchronies.

A total breakdown of the trainees were as follows: