There’s a great post over at First Do No Harm about recerting for ACLS. She points out that the recertification process has been dumbed down because a lot of the previous drugs that were taught have been eliminated and the new emphasis is on effective and timely chest compressions.

I took this course less than a year ago and my understanding for this new emphasis was that they no longer teach some of these drugs because there’s no evidence that the drugs actually work. In fact there’s not much evidence that any ACLS interventions improve outcomes, aside from timely defibriliation. I know I must be oversimplifying this enormously but that’s the impression I got.

My only problem with the class was that they taught ICU nurses and floor nurses the same material. I’m ashamed to admit this but some of ICU colleagues were like, “Can you believe some of the floor nurses don’t know this?” And I was like, “Well yeah, when you work on a floor for 10 years and never experience a code then of course you don’t know some of this crap.”

Perhaps some new levels of ACLS are in order. I propose the following:

S-ACLS (Super-Advanced Cardiac Life Support) for critical care nurses, and
SD-ACLS (Super-Duper Advanced Cardiac Life Support) for emergency response team nurses.
RRC-ACLS – (Really, Really Complicated Advanced Cardiac Life Support) for health care providers that have completed all levels and still don’t feel like they know what to do in a code.

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