Effects of “FIRST2ACT” Model on Knowledge and Practical Skills of Difficult Airway Management in Nurse Anesthesia Students: An Interventional Study

Introduction: An important part of anesthesia management is opening and maintaining the patient’s airway. Failure to establish and maintain a safe airway for patients during anesthesia is a life-threatening condition. Despite advances in science and technology, difficult airway management is far from ideal. Providing a simulated environment for critical situations seems to be the best way to better educate and prevent medical errors. This study aimed to compare the effect of the FIRST2ACT (Feedback Incorporating Review and Simulation Techniques to Act on Clinical Trend) model on knowledge and practical skills of difficult airway management and respiratory accidents between the intervention and control groups.Methods: This study was a quasi-experimental intervention with before and after design. Sampling was done by census method and the participants were third and fourth-year nurse anesthesia students (n=62). The students were randomly allocated to an intervention group (n=31) educated and practicing based on the FIRST2ACT model and a control group (n=31). The intervention consisted of five stages: developing core knowledge, assessment, simulation, reflective review, and performance feedback, all based on the FIRST2ACT model. Theoretical and practical skills were examined in the participants. Data collection tools included a questionnaire and a checklist.Results: The results showed that after applying the FIRST2ACT model, the intervention group scored higher than the control group in both theoretical knowledge (17.87±1.43 vs. 12.67±1.35) and practical skills (134.28±3.21 vs. 81.58±8.55). This difference in results between the two groups was statistically significant (P˂0.001).Conclusion: It can be concluded that using this model was effective to improve the knowledge and practical skills of nurse anesthesia students in the field of difficult airway management and respiratory accidents during anesthesia

Design of 3.1–12 GHz Printed Elliptical Disc Monopole Antenna with Half Circular Modified Ground Plane for UWB Application

This paper presents a new design of an elliptical disc monopole antenna for ultra wideband (UWB) applications. The antenna is fed by a 50 Omega microstrip line and printed on a dielectric FR4 substrate of permittivity epsilon (r) = 4.7 and height h = 1.6 mm. The optimization on the planar elliptical disc monopole has been presented to accomplish an ultra wide 10 dB return loss bandwidth. The design includes a half-modified circular ground plane with two short I-shaped sleeves in the middle to enhance the S-parameter characteristics across the whole UWB frequency band. Furthermore, compared to a simple rectangular shaped ground plane, the proposed design enhances the bandwidth and improves input return loss. The obtained results confirm that the proposed antenna achieves greater than 90 % radiation efficiency, better than 10 dB return loss, and 0.1 ns group delay in the frequency range of 3.1-12 GHz. The parameters, which affect the performance of the antenna with respect to frequency domain and time domain characteristics, are investigated also. In addition, the proposed antenna is fabricated and the simulation results are compared to the measurement results to prove the superiority of the antenna