title: Emergency pediatric anesthesia - accessibility of information.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Emergency pediatric situations are stressful for all involved. Variation in weight, physiology, and anatomy can be substantial and errors in calculating drugs and fluids can be catastrophic.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  To evaluate the reliability of information resources that anesthetic trainees might use when faced with common pediatric emergencies.
  
  
  METHODS
  Anesthetic trainees from a single UK deanery were recruited and timed while they identified 18 predetermined pieces of information from three Advanced Pediatric Life Support (APLS) scenarios. The two most popular smartphone applications identified from a previous survey, PaedsED (PaedsED. iED limited, Version 1.0.8, Updated March 2011. ©2009) and Anapaed (AnaPaed. Thierry Girard, Version 1.4.2, Updated Nov 2, 2012. ©Thierry Girard), the British National Formulary for Children (cBNF) and trainee's inherent knowledge were compared with a local, check-list style, handbook of pediatric emergency algorithms - Pediatric Anesthetic Emergency Data sheets (PAEDs).
  
  
  RESULTS
  Twenty anesthetic trainees were recruited. The fastest source of information was the trainees own knowledge (median 61 s, IQR 51-83 s). Second fastest was PAEDs (80, [59-110] s), followed by PaedsED (84, [65-111]). The most accurate source overall was PaedsED (100, [83-100]) although the accuracy varied between scenarios. The handbook was rated as the most popular resource by the trainees.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Although fastest, trainees own knowledge is inaccurate, highlighting the need for additional, rapidly accessible, information. Of the two smartphone applications, PaedsED proved to be fast, accurate, and more popular, while Anapaed was accurate but slow to use. The PAEDs handbook, with its checklist-style format, was also fast, accurate and rated the most popular information source.
authors.affiliation: Department of Anaesthesia, Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust, Nottingham, UK.
authors.forename: Hannah
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: King
authors.forename: Georgina E M
authors.initials: GE
authors.lastname: Pipe
authors.forename: Sarah L
authors.initials: SL
authors.lastname: Linford
authors.forename: Iain K
authors.initials: IK
authors.lastname: Moppett
authors.forename: James A M
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Armstrong
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D000758:Anesthesia; D000776:Anesthesiology / Q000193:education / Q000592:standards*; D002648:Child; D004632:Emergency Medical Services; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D016247:Information Storage and Retrieval / Q000379:methods*; D008297:Male; D063967:Material Safety Data Sheets; D008491:Medical Informatics Applications; D010372:Pediatrics / Q000193:education / Q000592:standards*; D000068997:Smartphone
keywords: checklist; emergency algorithms; information resources; patient safety; pediatric; smartphone applications