Moderate Sedation Education Software

The course will be founded upon JCAHO's and ASA's guidelines for sedation, emphasizing the concepts with animations, audio, scenarios, and quizzes. Interactive feedback will be incorporated to guide the clinician during the course. The course will be offered commercially over the World Wide Web, with successful completion providing continuing medical education (CME) credit. It will fulfill JCAHO recommended guidelines. In a controlled simulated environment, the hypothesis that the web based training protocol will provide the practitioner the knowledge base necessary to manage the four scenarios as well or better than practitioners completing the standard moderate sedation certification course will be tested.

1. Evaluate the effectiveness of the course. The University of Utah Center for Patient Simulation is an ideal environment to evaluate the efficacy of a web-based training course. The new web-based course will be compared to standard course material and lessons. We will recruit 40 nurses who administer moderate sedation at the University of Utah Health Sciences Center. Half of the nurses will receive traditional training (typical course and guidelines published from the literature), and half will receive the web-based course. Users will be tested on their knowledge of moderate sedation with four moderate sedation scenarios, in which the simulated patient experiences over-sedation, apnea, and excessive pain.