The Beginning of prehospital Airway management Education
Personally, I think the most tough part of prehospital treatment, whether due to disease or not, is airway management. First of all, the act of opening the patient’s mouth and looking inside is burdensome. As it is indeed a part that is directly related to the patient’s life and comes first in the ABCDE of patient evaluation (even though it is XABCDE in the case of trauma), its importance and burden cannot be overstated.
Prehospital airway management has the following difficulties compared to in-hospital airway management:
* unsafe environment
* countless onlookers
* There is no lighting or it is indeed too luminous (dazzling).
* dust, heat, cold
Even if you escape all of this and come in by ambulance, the situation will not improve much. there are manny times when you cannot maintain your proper posture in a cramped ambulance. If you vomit, there is a high possibility that there will be a huge party. What medications can be used for airway management? There is no such thing.
So a few like-minded paramedics and emergency medical workers started thinking about this a long time ago. For the first time in 2025, meaningful training was held for three days at the Gumi Fire Station in Gyeongbuk. Even though my skills are minimal, I was fortunate enough to participate as an instructor and would like to share this experience with you.
Beginning of prehospital airway management education
Nine instructors from all over the country gathered for this course. We had a lot of different types of educational experience not only in airway management but also in and outside of firefighting, and we had had similar concerns for a long time and had formed a certain level of rapport.
Although there were some dissonances along the way, we were still able to complete the educational curriculum and detailed lesson plans in a fairly early time.
It was difficult for me to be among instructors from all over the country who were doing great things, and with my excessive weight gain and abdominal and visceral obesity. Still, in order not to be held back, I participated more actively than usual. The time when imperfect people came together and gave each other good synergy and a little tension was another time of personal growth.
Equipment, equipment… equipment
Due to the nature of airway management education, a lot of equipment is required. Not only expensive equipment such as video laryngoscopes, but also mannequins for practice, consumables, bags set up for scenario practice, etc.
At this time, the cooperation of the Gyeongbuk Fire Department, which hosted the training, shined. Along with renting an excellent training facility called the Gumi Fire Department, the
A while ago, while looking at a group chat room for paramedics, there was a post by someone who claimed, ‘The 2020 cardiac arrest guidelines say that ETT, SGA, and BVM ventilation do not make much difference in survival rate prognosis, so endotracheal intubation sets should be removed from ambulances.’ It’s a very sad reality.
After this study became known, it seems like there have been a lot of people who go out to CPR sites and blindly insert the I-GEL first. Now is the time to think about how fragmented interpretation of knowledge is causing harm to many patients, and whether knowledge is being used to exonerate oneself rather than for the benefit of patients.
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I believe that education is the only path to the future of first aid that we pursue (even though there might potentially be employees who wholeheartedly reject it). And if the training so far has been doctor-centered, I think this training will be of great meaning in that the instructors and the paramedics working in the field have time to meet and communicate in person.
We hope that this education will continue to develop and develop into a representative education in prehospital airway management with a better curriculum, more structured education schedule, and more outstanding instructors in the next session.
Gangwon Gangneung Fire Department_ Ahn Ji-won: ajwon119@korea.kr