ECMO Training in ICU

Are you being trained on the patient side or the pump side? Our PICU (different animal- I know) has a lengthy training and precepting time for running the pump. But then, our ECMO is mostly V-A and our most common diagnoses are single ventricle physiology, pulmonary hypertension of the newborn, and congenital diaphragmatic hernia.

The perfusionists usually manage the ecmo at our place. They may have a role where you are..... or not.

98% of the ECMO in my hospital (NICU, PICU and peds CVICU) is managed by a bedside nurse (or a couple of RTs on the team). It's 2 8-hour class days and a minimum of 100 hours bedside precepting. Perfusion comes in once a day to check the circuit or for big procedures but the day-to-day and minute-to-minute management is done at the bedside by staff. At least one ECMO specialist plus another, or a non-ECMO patient care nurse, are assigned to the patient and pump. We do VV and VA ECMO. The pump stuff isn't so bad, but we're expected to know a TON about the anticoagulation part of it and, even though I've been doing it for a little less than year, I still feel like I have a ton to learn.

Ask a lot of questions and don't be intimidated by the machine. Learn about it, figure out which dials do what, and definitely bring up what should be done in an emergent situation. You never TRULY learn ECMO until you take one. Good luck and let us know how it goes!