Vortex Approach Trainer app for iPhone and iPad

This App is designed to facilitate the training of clinical teams in use of the Vortex Approach to airway management, in a simulated setting. It is not intended for use for airway management in a clinical environment. Use of the App assumes familiarity with the principles of the Vortex Approach including the Emergency Surgical Airway (ESA) Status and proficiency with the associated technical skills.

Clinical teams being introduced to the Vortex Approach can use the App to help guide them through their management of a simulated difficult airway in a structured manner.

Selecting any non-surgical airway technique allows access to menus which provide prompts for specific optimisation interventions for that technique. Prompts are arranged under the 5 general categories of optimisation strategies used by the Vortex Approach. These cues assist staff to associate each of these categories with the individual techniques that may be required to achieve an "optimal attempt" at each of the 3 non-surgical airway techniques. In this way these 5 categories become more effective prompts when using the standard printed cognitive tool alone.

Once all interventions for a given category of optimisation strategy have been considered it may be crossed off. Crossing off all 5 categories of optimisation strategy for a given non-surgical airway technique leads to a "greying out" out the relevant non-surgical airway technique on the Vortex graphic and escalation of the ESA Status. These visual cues assist staff to understand how movement towards an "optimal attempt" at two or more separate non-surgical airway techniques can occur in parallel. It also reinforces the progressive limitation of remaining options that results as this takes place and the need to escalate preparation for performing emergency surgical airway.

Selection of the Green Zone provides prompts to reoxygenate, gather resources and make a plan. Potential plans are broadly categorised as those that can be undertaken whilst remaining in the Green Zone and those that require returning to the "funnel" of the Vortex.

Voice prompts are present to model the declarations that should be made to facilitate team situational awareness at key points during airway management. These can be disabled to encourage team members to make these declarations themselves as they move towards understanding the concepts and implementation of the Vortex Approach so that they are able to use only the standard printed cognitive tool when managing an actual difficult airway in a clinical setting.