Emergency pediatric anesthesia - accessibility of information

Summary Background Emergency pediatric situations are stressful for all involved. Variation in weight, physiology, and anatomy can be substantial and errors in calculating drugs and fluids can be catastrophic. Objectives To evaluate the reliability of information resources that anesthetic trainees might use when faced with common pediatric emergencies. Methods Anesthetic trainees from a single UK deanery were recruited and timed while they identified 18 predetermined pieces of information from three Advanced Pediatric Life Support (APLS) scenarios. The two most popular smartphone applications identified from a previous survey, PaedsED (PaedsED. iED limited, Version 1.0.8, Updated March 2011. ©2009) and Anapaed (AnaPaed. Thierry Girard, Version 1.4.2, Updated Nov 2, 2012. ©Thierry Girard), the British National Formulary for Children (cBNF) and trainee's inherent knowledge were compared with a local, check‐list style, handbook of pediatric emergency algorithms – Pediatric Anesthetic Emergency Data sheets (PAEDs). Results Twenty anesthetic trainees were recruited. The fastest source of information was the trainees own knowledge (median 61 s, IQR 51–83 s). Second fastest was PAEDs (80, [59–110] s), followed by PaedsED (84, [65–111]). The most accurate source overall was PaedsED (100, [83–100]) although the accuracy varied between scenarios. The handbook was rated as the most popular resource by the trainees. Conclusion Although fastest, trainees own knowledge is inaccurate, highlighting the need for additional, rapidly accessible, information. Of the two smartphone applications, PaedsED proved to be fast, accurate, and more popular, while Anapaed was accurate but slow to use. The PAEDs handbook, with its checklist‐style format, was also fast, accurate and rated the most popular information source.