Advanced Pediatric Airway Trainer for Enhanced Clinical Education in Pediatric Critical Care

Project Summary/Abstract Clinical training aids such as surgical mannequins and procedural trainers are important tools for teaching proper technique to physicians and first responders. However, the majority of these training tools were developed for adult anatomies. Pediatric patients are often more challenging to treat, but few resources exist for advanced simulation in pediatric critical care education. This is particularly apparent for airway procedures such as intubation, because children's airways are significantly different and more difficult to work with than fully developed adult airways. Due to the difficulty of working with pediatric airways and the relatively low volume of pediatric patients that physicians and emergency personnel see, many EMTs are told not to try intubation as the failure rate is too high. Therefore, an advanced pediatric airway trainer could greatly improve clinical education for pediatric critical care, both for training new physicians and first responders, so that when a critically ill child is presented they are able to successfully perform lifesaving measures including intubation. In this Phase I SBIR project, we will develop an advanced pediatric airway trainer to improve clinical education for pediatric critical care. Most training aids are developed for adult anatomies; there are fewer options for modeling pediatric airways, and those that do exist tend to be much too simple. The primary goal of the project is to design an advanced airway trainer that incorporates features that are not currently on the market, including modular features to vary the anatomy and difficulty, incorporation of sensing to map the trainee's path through the airway, and the ability to incorporate fluids into the airway to simulate the added difficulty when blood or vomit is present. We will build and test a prototype of the key subsystem for this device: a sensing module that can map the path of a laryngoscope through the airway to aid in training proper technique. Together our team will develop an advanced airway trainer that provides direct feedback to the trainee and incorporates modular components for adjustable difficultly, improving education and training for pediatric critical care.