The Manual has been endorsed and supported by the European Society of Anaesthesiology (ESA), supported by the Australian Society of Anaesthetists (ASA), and highly commended by the BMA Medical Book Awards 2012. Summarizing, this is not a textbook, not even a book as we understand it. The Anesthetic Crisis Manual must be considered an aid, a piece of fast use information that will help us when anaesthetic crisis shows up, to orient the kind of crisis and act accordingly for the benefit of the patient. It should not be kept in our pockets or on bookshelves but rather hanging very visible and handy in any anaesthesia workstation in or out of the operating theatre.
This book is amazing! It fulfils what Joe Novak was talking about on EMCrit Podcast; this is the manual you want in the OR/OT after you go through the unexpected. Waterproof, unrippable, and easy to find the crucial info you need–good stuff.
Hear Emcrit talk about The ACM in the last 3 minutes of Podcast 117 at :http://emcrit.org/podcasts/everyday-emergency-kits-keith-conover/
The ACM project is aiming to standardise crisis management and improve patient safety by providing protocols, checklists and diagnostic pathways (consistent with the European Society of Anaesthesiology’s Helsinki Declaration on Patient Safety in Anaesthesiology, 2010) in all operating and anaesthetising environments.
In citing the well-known and very successful landing of flight 1549 on the Hudson River, Goldhaber-Fiebert and Howard1 raise some important issues regarding the use of cognitive aids and checklists in time-sensitive crisis scenarios. An alternative perspective, however, is that the “dual engine restart” checklist proved a distraction…
