M Hewson

Hi colleagues - many of you will be familiar with nicutools.org neonatal calculators. My new project is a synchronous, multi-participant, instructor-led team simulation in a free browser tool available at neosim.nicutools.org You can set up a virtual neonatal resus case and invite your trainees into the "sim lab" where they can prepare equipment, discuss team roles, then in real time resuscitate the virtual manikin which responds in a life-like fashion to their interventions. T-piece ventilation, intubation, UVC, adrenaline, red cells, needle thoracotomy and more are all modelled. You as teacher / instructor can adapt the sim to suit your teaching requirements and flex the manikin's response mid-sim as you need to support learning. There is a comprehensive debrief timeline provided post sim. Initial user feedback is very positive and is helping with on-going improvements to the project. If you have any trainees interested in the idea of study into the educational value of this specific tool I would be very keen to hear from you as well.

While at Wellington NZ NICU, I created a set of infusion calculators for neonatal use These are mostly fixed rate, and they are built around the specific drug ampoule strengths we stock. Michael

The Kaiser Permanente early onset sepsis calculator gives a great insight into this problem ... http://www.dor.kaiser.org/external/DORExternal/research/InfectionProbabilityCalculator.aspx Anyway from the data provided the EOS risk is very low and observation is all that is needed unless clinical features of sepsis appear. By the way, why wait to stop antibiotics at 48 hours? EOS cultures are almost always positive by 24 hours or not at all.