With over 200 COVID19 intubations, Ralph Slepian MD shares their experience and the lessons learned from a team-based approach to safely managing the airway of COVID19 patients.

We understand the important role PPE (or lack of it) plays in caring for COVID19 patients. It’s even more important when we talk about protecting clinicians who are performing high risk procedures like intubation. Data is scarce and fear is rampant. Fortunately our institution, addressed this issue early, and I was able to take part in the group who developed our COVID19 airway guidelines. Now three weeks later, some of the lessons learned have started to emerge.

I recently had the opportunity to debrief with Dr Ralph Slepian who leads our COVID19 intubation team and discuss their experience so far. It’s encouraging to know that after logging over 200 intubations, no one on this team has developed COVID19 symptoms or tested positive using this team-based approach.

But this hard experience is teaching us that there’s much more to safely caring for these patient than PPE. It requires, preparation. planning, team-based training and a thoughtful workflow to minimize exposure. If you’re preparing your institution for its own wave of COVID19 patients listen this Interview with Dr Ralph Slepian @RalphSlepian where we share with you the lessons we have learned using one approach that appears to be keeping providers safe.