key: cord-0745166-s26do7hz
authors: Rastogi, Amit; Agarwal, Anil; Singh, Tapas; Priya, Vansh
title: Deployment of anaesthesia technicians in the second wave of COVID- 19 at level 3 centres: A novel initiative
date: 2021-10-28
journal: Indian J Anaesth
DOI: 10.4103/ija.ija_493_21
sha: c3df37787de130453022c94759771807fa836222
doc_id: 745166
cord_uid: s26do7hz

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This is an open access journal, and articles are distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 License, which allows others to remix, tweak, and build upon the work non-commercially, as long as appropriate credit is given and the new creations are licensed under the identical terms. [1, 2] Deployment of anaesthesia technicians in the second wave of COVID-19 at the L3 centre was a complete game changer as their introduction resolved equipment maintenance-related issues, a major bottleneck in the management of patients.

Due to frequent duty shifts in COVID-19 setups, the missing, misplacement and malfunctioning of airway equipment was regularly observed. After the deployment of anaesthesia technicians, such issues were completely sorted. The technician team maintained a complete inventory of all airway equipment in the ICU/HDU and also ensured that the complete airway and drug trolley was always ready and functioning. With inappropriate functioning of airway and resuscitation equipment, the HCWs are not only exposed to increased aerosol exposure but the frustration also mounts up since PPE somewhat blunts the reflexes. The technicians also took care of proper cleansing and disinfection of the airway equipment which is often neglected.

With the second wave receding and threat of an impending third COVID wave, we strongly recommend posting of anaesthesia technician teams in tertiary care COVID centres to facilitate vascular, airway and ventilatory management. We propose that this intervening lean phase of pandemic should be utilised in further training of anaesthesia technicians in an intensive care scenario, to serve in the role of force multiplier in the third wave of the pandemic.

From our experience, we recommend posting of anaesthesia technicians in COVID-19 L3 centres as a routine, as they are of immense help not only for maintenance of ventilators, bilevel positive airway pressure, high-flow nasal cannula, intubation trolley, etc., but also they are skilled enough to provide the much-needed technical help during various ICU procedures [ Figure 1 ].

Nil.

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1: Summary of work done by anaesthesia technicians at L3 centre How to cite this article: Rastogi A, Agarwal A, Singh T, Priya V. Deployment of anaesthesia technicians in the second wave of COVID-19 at level 3 centres: A novel initiative