Spicing up those CME Classes

by Valerie DeFrance

"Boring!"

That's what many of us hear or say, as EMS personnel who face getting those CME hours done. As students, each already knows (one hopes) a significant percentage of what the lecture is going to be about. For an instructor attending a CME class, the percentage of knowledge is, or should be, still higher.

If you're the one leading the CME class, it can make it difficult to keep students' attention long enough to get that missing or forgotten percentage across.

If you are instructing BLS, ACLS, PALS, and so on, you're guaranteed a sure class winner with all the recent AHA changes. There's nothing like major changes in curriculum and guidelines to get students to pay close attention.

But what about instruction the rest of the year? What about the continuing education and review of the so-called everyday subjects? Well, your job is to spice it up a little. Go a bit off the beaten track with tidbits that help hold students' attention. For example, in an airway class, I present a "History of Intubation" that is usually a big hit and helps keep their attention.

Warning! Warning! This may actually take a little extra work

Explore the industry. What is the latest in equipment (even if in your wildest dreams you'll never be able to afford it for the class or the service)? You can usually get pictures online, or seek out brochures and posters — even samples — from company representatives. What is the latest trend (besides the hot amiodarone debate)? The LMA? 12 leads? Why? What do they think of it?

Add some offbeat information. It may not be exactly relevant to EMS, but will help keep the group's attention as you intersperse these tidbits into the regular lecture. Sometimes they act as a great springboard to other discussions.

The following could be tied into a session about airways, pediatric respiratory muscles, or oxygen tents (sometime you just have to be a bit creative)!

Until recently, it was thought that no mammal ever breathes through its skin the way some amphibians do. Most mammals have thick skin designed to keep in their body heat, making it impossible to exchange gas through it. But a newborn Julia Creek dunnart (Sminthopsis douglasi) manages the trick.

A dunnart is a tiny, mouse-like marsupial found in Australia. A newborn Julia Creek dunnart is just 1/6 of an inch long (4 mm), and is so undeveloped that its breathing muscles don't work. While it grows, protected within its mother's pouch, the young dunnart breathes through its very thin skin. Even after three weeks, the growing baby dunnart still gets a third of its oxygen directly through its skin.

Dunnarts are among Australia's smallest marsupials. They live in grasslands and mixed woodlands, where they eat mostly insects and an occasional lizard or mouse.

How do woodpeckers avoid brain damage?" Recent research using high-speed films of acorn woodpeckers (Melanerpes formicivorus) shows that their heads can endure up to 1,200 gravities of force when the beak hits the wood. Despite this force, their brains do not suffer damage.

The woodpecker's brain is tightly packed into a capsule of dense but spongy bone tissue, which absorbs some of the force of sudden shocks to the outside of the brain case. There is very little fluid surrounding the brain, so it isn't free to jerk around. In addition, there are special muscles in the woodpecker's head that contract at just the right moment to absorb still more of the shock. There are also support structures that pass around the back of the skull, starting near the base of the tongue.

The woodpecker's brain is not the only part of the bird's head that must be protected. If it didn't close its eyes just before each peck, they would fly clear out of their sockets.

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