The American Society of Anesthesiologists has expanded its suite of educational offerings for non-anesthesiologists to now include resources for providing deep sedation. The original offering in 2015 provided simulation based training for non-Anesthesiologist physicians and care team members in moderate sedation. It was designed to teach the pharmacological basis of moderate sedation and provide a basis for documenting adequate training to support the CMS requirement that anesthesia directors oversee sedation throughout the hospital. This original module was supplemented by a version teaching deep sedation launched in 2017 and updated in 2018. An article by David Martin M.D. et al in the November 2018 American Society of Anesthesiologists Monitor overviews the educational offerings and pricing for these valuable tools.
EHC NOTE: With the rapidly expanding demand for anesthesia services in Non-OR Anesthesia (NORA) settings, we regularly see demand for sedation of patients in a variety of clinical settings exceed the capacity of anesthesia departments. From the perspectives of OR and hospital leadership, access to the educational resources from the ASA to train non-anesthesiologists in moderate and deep sedation should support safe expansion of the pool of clinical providers who can meet this demand while supporting patient safety, hospital throughput and clinical consistency. From the perspective of anesthesia groups, these tools provide professionally created resources to support meeting of CMS requirements by ensuring that all non-anesthesiologists providing sedation services are appropriately trained and that the training they receive is documented.