Those machines at the back of the bed can seem really intimidating! If you are new to the critical care it can seem like you will never get to grips with them.

Pressure control, pressure support, minute volume, PSIMV and PEEP are all terms you may not have heard before. How do you know when to change one and not the other? What is their function and why do we use so many different terms?

When I first started in critical care I had no idea about how mechanical ventilation works and just relied on my colleagues to help me out. It was only with time, and a lot of outside reading that I started to understand the principles.

And it was only then that I felt confident enough to be able to influence my patients ventilatory status with a degree of independence. This made me a better nurse to that patient as I did not have to wait to be told what to do but, instead, recognised the signs that the ventilator was giving me to be able to make a judgement on what and when to change.

It has taken me a long time to get the hang of the ins and outs on mechanical ventilation. In this course I can pass on this learning to make your pathway through critical care easier and to help you provide a higher level of care.

There is video teaching, audio files and PDFs of much of that teaching to assist in this process. We start with the basics and work or way through much of the terminology trying to give you a deeper understanding.

We will then also go on to learn about the tracheostomy and how that affects the patient and our care of that patient.