I don't see anyone being overly cocky here. There are a number of us like
@Mad Jack (as far as I can tell said he was an RT) and myself (was a paramedic for years) who did copious intubations as part of our previous careers, so naturally we would be confident there, its not cocky, we have used the skill on real patients dozens of times. As most of us have said, a dummy is fine for getting the basic motor skills down but it is very very different intubating a real person. I don't see anyone advocating for someone who never touched a laryngoscope and doesn't know the difference between Miller or Macintosh to be doing live tubes, we are just saying that simulators are very limited and quite unlike the real experience and that real experience is going to teach you a lot more than working a dummy. I have used mainly the old intubation dummies, I did get the chance to try a newer one at one point, but honestly I didn't see a huge practical difference. Overall, running a scenario on a dummy as a lab group will be helpful for the rudimentary basics but it still is not like what will really happen. For this, a brand new simulator or a 10 year old dummy will likely yield the same result. I would agree with others that there are many more important factors in selecting a school.
I think there is a term for those who forget about what it means/feels to be a student (learner) once they are no longer a student themselves (in this case, student of learning how to intubate, putting in lines, and etc).
Do you honestly think the majority or even a significant percentage of entering medical students have skills like yours?
Again, some of you make it seem like practicing and getting your basics down is a waste of time because you can learn much more in a real situation.
Tell me something I don't know. Of course, dummies aren't like real people and there are much more moving parts (literally and figuratively) during real life situation. But you can't just devalue advancement in technology because it isn't the same as the real thing.
Do you think Neil Armstrong could have went to the moon (Not some desert in Arizona) if he didn't practice down on Earth? Why not let people just drive on roads without driving classes? Why not let pilots just fly their planes around like it's no one's business without flight simulations?
Let's all just call it quits and stop making improvements and make dummies more lifelike because it can't ever be like the real thing.
You don't have to see a "HUGE" practical difference. That's not how science or technology works. You can't expect something perfect to arise all of a sudden. It's the gradual small changes that make something better (That isn't evolution by the way. Purpose of evolution isn't to become "better." There is no purpose.)
I'm not advocating someone to pick a school over another based on technology. That would be silly. But like others have said, given two same schools with same distance, tuition, clinical exposure, rotation sites, mentors, pass rate, and blah blah, there is no reason to not pick the one with better technology.
With everything said, I completely understand your point of view. It's basically the saying "A picture is worth a thousand words." I know. But with people's lives on the line, I don't want to freak out and don't know what to do. At least by practicing on dummies and doing simulations, I'll hopefully know to make sure I knock the person out cold before attempting to intubate.
. I agree, a couple of real codes were much more valuable. I would say that in the dozens of real codes I worked, I never had one that went like the labs. Granted, in the labs we had 5 or 6 people, in real life it was often just two of us which made things more chaotic.
