Airway Management

A patent airway is vital for survival and is generally self maintained by the patient, however, during significant illness there may be a need for you to intervene to support the patient's airway. Depending on the situation airway support can range from simple changes in the patient's position through to advanced or surgical airways. The need for airway support can either be unplanned and and emergency situation or as part of a planned intervention such as general anaesthetic for surgery/intensive care. Good airway management is an integral part of basic, intermediate and advanced life support and as such being comfortable with the equipment and how to use it is a vital part of the nurses skill set.

The choice of airway support will be guided by both the patient's condition and the clinician managing the airway's skill set and training. It may be that you are the clinician managing the airway or it may be that you will look after patient's with advanced airways inserted by other clinicians who then hand over care of the patient to yourself, such as in an intensive care setting. As such it is important to have a good understanding of the processes, equipment and underlying airway physiology to ensure any issues or changes in the patient's need for airway support is identified at the earliest possible opportunity. However this page will focus on basic emergency airway management looking predominantly at airway manoeuvres and basic airway adjuncts as advanced airway management is a specialist skill with its own training and competency needs.

Read the illustrated guides to Airway Management and Adjuncts on ClinicalSkills.net

You will need to be logged into ClinicalSkills.net to use these pages: Go to https://shu.app.clinicalskills.net, enter your user name and password. You must have set up your account to do this. For further information on how to login to your ClinicalSkills.net account please click here: How to Login to ClinicalSkills.net 

Once logged in to your account, click on Guides in the main Dashboard area and search for the following guides:

• Cardiopulmonary resuscitation: Airway management

• Cardiopulmonary resuscitation: Insertion of an oropharyngeal or nasopharyngeal airway

Click on the button below to navigate to the 'Assessments' area of ClinicalSkills.net. Please make sure you're logged into ClinicalSkills.net already, otherwise you may not be able to open and take the test. Once you have reached the 'Assessments' area, select 'Local Assessments' and then click on the test called 'Airway Management in Adults' to begin. You will need to score 80% or more to pass. Make sure you've read the ClinicalSkills.net procedures thoroughly before taking the test as many of the answers will be found within there! 

From the ClinicalSkills.net 'Guides' area, once you have opened the guide you wish to find a checklist for, you can also easily access the corresponding step-by-step checklist for that procedure by following these instructions:

• Open the correct guide that you want to find the checklist for.

• Click the option 'Get the Guide Checklist' from the tabs at the top of the page.

• This will open the checklist, allowing you to either complete this digitally online whilst logged into clinicalskills.net, or alternatively to print out and complete this as a hard copy.

Airway Equipment Overview:

Geeky Medics - Airway Equipment Explained