Respiratory Therapists Archives - Dayton ICU Consulting

Episode 151: Breathing Trials with Karsten Roberts

Walking Home From The ICU Episode 151: Breathing Trials with Karsten Roberts

Are awakening trials just for breathing trials? How do we set patients up for successful breathing trials to minimize time on the ventilator? What role does sedation and mobility play into prompt liberation from mechanical ventilation? Karsten Roberts, MSc, RRT, FAARC joins us now to dive deep into spontaneous breathing trials in the ABCDEF Bundle.

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Episode 192 Debunking Myths- Sedation and Ventilator Asynchrony

Episode 192: Debunking Myths – Sedation and Ventilator Asynchrony

For years we have been taught at the bedside that sedation “improves ventilator asynchrony”. We have believed that patients must be sedated to be compliant with the ventilator. Is that true? What does the research show? Sylvia Stefanos, PharmD, BCCCP joins us armed with the evidence and ready to debunk the myths. Episode Transcription Kali

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Walking From ICU Episode 86 Ventilator Management in the Awake and Walking COVID19 Unit

Walking Home From The ICU Episode 86: Ventilator Management in the Awake and Walking COVID19 Unit

How is the “Awake and Walking ICU” keeping their COVID19 patients mentally and physically functional during severe COVID19? Do they face constant ventilator asynchrony and how do they deal with it? Geoff shares with us his vast experience as a respiratory therapist in walking patients on mechanical ventilation during critical illness and now COVID19. Episode

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ICU testimonial I stumbled upon Kali’s podcast midway through my anesthesia critical care fellowship in February 2021. At our institution, I got the impression that patients in the ICU either got better on their own or had a prolonged and complicated course to LTAC or death. In her podcast, Kali explained that LTAC was rarely the outcome for patients in the Awake and Walking ICU in Salt Lake City.

Their ICU survivors hardly ever got trached, PEGed, or sent to LTAC, and literally walked out of the hospital in condition as close to their previous health as they could be. Although the concept of using no sedation on ventilated patients was completely foreign to me, it made sense based on what I had read in the literature. I devoured all of the episodes from the beginning, many of them bringing tears and regret for my ignorance, followed by inspiration and hope in later episodes. Listening to her podcast has been one of the most profound experiences in my short, eight-year career in medicine.

After discovering the no sedation, early mobility practice at the Awake and Walking ICU, my focus shifted to bringing it to my own institution. I visited Salt Lake City in March to witness it with my own eyes. Since then, I’ve been in touch closely with Kali and Louise to learn the practical approaches to sedation wean and sedation avoidance for newly intubated patients in the ICU.

Mikita Fuchita, MD
Colorado, USA

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