ProPALS is a Pediatric Advanced Life Support Provider Course designed for healthcare providers
that direct or participate in the management of respiratory and cardiovascular emergencies
in pediatric patients.
The goal of this course is to train healthcare providers to recognize respiratory emergencies,
shock, and cardiopulmonary emergencies in pediatric patients, and to train healthcare
providers to intervene with high quality individual and team skills.
When you have successfully completed this course you should be able to do the following
for pediatric patients: Recognize cardiac arrest early and begin CPR within 10 seconds
of starting the primary assessment.
You should be able to perform high-quality CPR per current basic life support recommendations
and guidelines.
You should be able to identify whether or not a patient requires immediate intervention,
provide pediatric advanced life support per current recommendations and guidelines, recognize
and treat respiratory distress and failure, identify and treat compensated and decompensated
shock, interpret core arrhythmias and manage stable and unstable patients by using appropriate
medications and electrical therapy, describe the signs and symptoms of an unstable patient
with an arrhythmia, perform as an effective team leader and apply team dynamics and implement
post-cardiac arrest management.
In order to be successful in this course one will need to have a foundation of previously
acquired advanced level skills.
Depending upon your licensure level and area of expertise, you’re expected to be proficient
in the skills of placing an advanced airway such as an endotracheal tube, obtaining vascular
access with an IO or an IV, recognizing basic arrhythmias, performing defibrillation and
cardioversion, and knowing basic pharmacology information that includes the indications,
contraindications ALS medications and the different approved methods for the administration
of those meds.
There are three parts to completing this ProPALS certification.
First, is to complete the video training.
If you are recertifying and feel completely confident with your retained PALS information,
you may opt to skip the training and go directly to the skill scenarios, and that’s perfectly
fine.
The second step of completion would be to pass all of the skill scenarios.
A ProPALS participant will have the opportunity to interact and put PALS knowledge into practice
by actively participating as the team leader in simulated case scenarios.
These scenarios will allow you to practice identifying and treating pediatric conditions
by applying a systematic approach to pediatric assessment using current PALS algorithms and
practicing effective resuscitation team dynamics.
One will not be able to take the final test until they have passed all of the skill scenarios
with a 100%.
The reason that we’ve required that 100% skills passing during the scenario based testing
is because, unlike other courses, that maybe are not so specific and not as technical,
ACLS and PALS both have extremely critical techniques, medications, doses and procedures.
We know as healthcare professionals to healthcare professionals, no one would want to risk,
or chance, not knowing what to do or doing something incorrectly that could cost our
patient their life.
So we believe you’ll appreciate the fact that we require full mastery of those skill
scenarios that you’re going to be taking.
Now the third and final step to completion is to pass the final exam.
The video training is always available to review as often as you like.
It is a valuable tool that will help you gain knowledge of pediatric advanced life support
skills.
Also, don't forget to download and review the student manual which includes PALS treatment
algorithms and ECG recognition.
In fact, it even includes some other details that we thought may not work as well in a
video format.
So if you believe, after going through the videos, that you’ve missed some particular
content, don’t hesitate to download the workbook for those finer details.
This will be a helpful guide throughout the course.