I totally agree with this premise. As a medical student who can intubate with ease, it ticks me off when the attendings make me start with video laryngoscopy because the patient “looks” difficult because they’re BMI is 35. How will I attain intubation skills if I only practice on easy patients? And the freaking resident is behind me and can take over if I fail.
I don’t understand why almost all the CRNA’s where I’m at exclusively use the Miller blade. I was preparing to intubate a patient who required 3 attempts to intubate the week before with a Miller blade. The SRNA failed with one attempt, and it took the attending two attempts to successfully intubate.
I saw this in the note, so I prepared to intubate with a Mac. The CRNA tried to make me use a Miller “because it’s been shown to be most successful with difficult intubations”. I politely declined and he said “Ok, I’ll have the Miller on standby to take over”. I intubated with the Mac in 1 attempt in 10 seconds with a grade 1 view.
I’m not sure why I told this story, but I guess it goes to show that not only are people relying on video laryngoscopy a lot, but they also work with only 1 blade.