Challenges of Weaning

This continuing education program is accredited and can be taken for either CE accreditation or general learning. If taken for credit, this course provides one contact hour for nurses (California Board of Nursing), RTs (American Association of Respiratory Care), EMS professionals (CAPCE), and CRNAs (American Association of Nurse Anesthetists, B Credit).

Learning Objectives

Liberation from mechanical ventilation is a valuable life-sustaining intervention used to support patients in the ICU. While it is an indispensable tool, it is not without risk. Associated complications increase with the duration of mechanical ventilation. These include physiologic derangements associated with positive pressure ventilation, muscle deconditioning, sleep disturbance and psychological sequelae including anxiety, depression, and delirium, as well as ventilator associated events (VAE). The goal is always therefore, to facilitate liberation from the ventilator as quickly as possible once the conditions necessitating its use are resolving. In this section, we will address challenges associated with the weaning process and discuss how they may be minimized and resolved. In this course, we will review the following concepts:

• Initiation of the weaning process.
• Patient weaning classification.
• Contributing factors to the weaning process.
• Weaning process.
• Prolonged weaning.