Resident-led Seminar and Workshop on Airway Management for Physician Assistant Students: Evaluating Efficacy and Memory Retention.

Introduction: Physician assistants (PAs) should understand the implications and risks involved with airway management. Our study aimed to facilitate PA students' familiarity with airway management with instruction from anesthesiology residents. We assessed the students' knowledge of airway management both before and after a seminar to see if knowledge was retained.

Methods: Physician assistant students participated in a seminar (didactic lecture and a hands-on workshop) on airway management led by anesthesiology residents. The students took a true-false pretest and repeated the test following the seminar. After four months, the students repeated the same true-false test to assess retention. We used Friedman test to analyze differences between the pretest, posttest, and retention tests, as well as performed an itemized analysis on the questions.

Results: The students showed a significant difference between the pretest and posttest (P < 0.001) and between the pretest and retention test (P = 0.006). Students performed better per question on the retention test compared with the pretest, except for a question related to an indication for intubation (Z score = -2.757; P = 0.006).

Discussion: Our results demonstrated that educating PA students in airway management with anesthesia resident direction resulted in a statistically significant increase in their knowledge on the topic four months after the training. Interactive learning seems beneficial for gaining knowledge on the basic principles of airway management.