In Toulouse, the CHU trains its caregivers with flying colors – 20 minutes
- To deal with the coronavirus epidemic, the Toulouse Institute for Health Simulation at the Toulouse University Hospital trains caregivers in the new procedures put in place.
- Dressing or intubation, they are more than 1,500 in a week to have been trained in these specific gestures which must allow to reduce in particular the risks of contamination.
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“Use a video laryngoscope instead, this will prevent you from putting your head too close to that of the patient,” recalls the professor Thomas Geeraert to his attentive students. For the past week, this anesthesiologist, director of
the Toulouse Institute for Health Simulation, continuously shares its knowledge on the procedures to adopt when taking care of Covid-19 positive patients.
Over 1000 trained in 4 days. Intubation, dressing for COVID + patient in critical care at Toulouse University Hospital. We’re breaking records. Congratulations to everybody@CHUdeToulouse@ITSIMS_officiel@GreparToulouse@SFAR_ORG@SFARYoung pic.twitter.com/Rvm1Xt6vAm
– Thomas GEERAERTS (@ ThomasGEERAERT2) March 19, 2020
This involves not plugging in the respirator before intubating a patient or putting on your safety glasses properly to avoid fogging at the fateful time of intubation. “It was our Italian colleagues who told us to be careful because they were confronted with it, it sounds silly but it is important to know this,” says the specialist. So many small indications which must make it possible to reduce the contamination of the nursing staff.
From the nursing assistant to the resuscitator
Usually, its teams train on models almost 5,000 people per year. There, in one week, day and night, no less than 1,500 nurses, nursing assistants but also “senior” doctors were able to access the new procedures. “Quickly, we were faced with this very important need for training caregivers, in particular to adapt to certain characteristics of the Covid-19. We must also train people who are not used to intubating in an emergency, who usually work in the recovery room or take care of people who have broken their legs but cough and have a fever, ”says the specialist, who dispenses his course on the Purpan site.
He initially trained referents everywhere on the other care establishments of the Toulouse CHU, who themselves will have given the right instructions and trained their teams.
Be ready for the wave
“Our goal is to train as many people as possible. We have assembled teams and sent mannequins, this allows us to practice in everyone’s usual environment, whether in maternity or pediatrics. The procedure is thus understood, shown and improved and this allows us to be ready when the wave arrives, “continues Thomas Geeraerts.
These technical gestures, dressing or intubation, Guillaume Ducos, resuscitator, already knows them very well because they are part of his daily life. However, on Monday, for an hour, like his colleagues, he put on his student smock. “These gestures that we do today, repeating them over and over again, this allows us to do them in a reflex way, to play down the situation. When we arrive in front of the sick, we are ready ”, assures the one who officiates in the Emergency Resuscitation Medicine building in Purpan.
And it’s not Léa, an intern who will contradict him. “The more we do, the better. The white plan, we are trained there, but it is not the same theory and practice, we do not know where we are going but we will try to do it at best, “concludes the young woman.
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