COVID-19 respiratory equipment

All health workers require knowledge and skills to care for patients safely and protect themselves from undue harm. This course was developed due to the enormous emphasis placed on need for safe provision of oxygen to patients with COVID-19, but can be used for conditions beyond COVID-19. This course teaches how to choose the right equipment for your facility, how to set up new respiratory equipment, how to clinically use respiratory equipment, how to maintain equipment, including troubleshooting, repairs and infection prevention and control, and how to decommission equipment.

Photo credits: Eamonn O’Connell

Course information

In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, health workers have had more demands placed on them than ever before, especially in caring for patients with respiratory disease. This course was developed to teach health workers how to manage key respiratory medical equipment safely. The course is targeted toward health workers who may have to manage new respiratory devices; these may include clinicians in some settings or may be dedicated biomedical staff in other settings. The equipment focused on in this course are:

• Oxygen concentrator
• Oxygen cylinder
• Pulse oximeter
• High flow nasal cannula
• CPAP and BiPAP
• Patient monitor
• Mechanical ventilator

Course duration: Approximately 6 hours.

Certificates: A Confirmation of Participation will be issued to participants who have completed 100% of the learning materials in the course.

What you'll learn

• Describe considerations for selecting appropriate respiratory equipment for your facility;
• Describe and demonstrate how to get each of the following respiratory equipment ready to use safely on a patient;
• Describe and demonstrate how to clinically use each of the following respiratory equipment;
• Describe and demonstrate how to decontaminate the following respiratory equipment and its consumables;
• Describe proper preventive maintenance, troubleshooting and repair tactics for each respiratory equipment;
• Describe how to decommission respiratory equipment.