Abstract
Untill now in Tuscany, the doctors of the Ambulance Service 118 originate from general practitioners after specific qualifying courses, usually directed by resuscitators. In 1999, in Italy, was activated the Continuing Medical Education (CME) and in 2002 the Tuscan Region acknowledged the provisions in the matter. As our ambulance patients present a considerable number of low oxyhemoglobin saturations (Olia et al., ERJ 2003: 44s, 381s), formative events in respiratory diseases were carried out, involving specialists in respiratory medicine as teachers. The events were: emergency management of airways, acute respiratory failure, use of mechanical ventilators during ambulance transfers, alternative devices to intubation, CPAP and non invasive ventilation, oxygen therapy.
Formative events were unrolled in 4 hours meetings. At the end of meetings, learning and approval tests were carried out, for acquire the CME credits. Participants had to replay correctly at last the 80% of the questions and to attend the lesson's time. Moreover 2 short meetings of 2 hours each, were carried out and related to some aspects of respiratory fatigue and spontaneous pneumothorax. 382 hours of specialized formation, the 9% of all the formative hours dispensed from 2003 to 2010 by our Service, were delivered. 100% of the participants found interesting the treated topics; 98.9±1.8% found them useful in theory and the 98.3±2.9% in practice.
Besides the good results in CME credits, 1 point each hour, important concepts and techniques, from the point of view of the pneumologists were explained, showing a further vision of the respiratory emergencies and their management in the pre-hospital medicine.
- © 2011 ERS
