Near-peer teaching for sustainable capacity building of basic life support training in Haiti: Feasibility of a training the trainers model

Abstract

Findings: Data on the presence of nurse anesthetists was obtained for 142 countries. Of these, 113 countries were found to practice task shifting to nurse anesthetists. Nurse anesthesia was documented in all major regions of the world. Training duration ranged from 0 to 3.5 years of post-nursing school training in anesthesia. For countries where data on supervision was available, unsupervised nurse anesthetist practice was identified in 17% (3/18) of high-income countries, 47% of upper-middle-income countries (7/15), 60% of lower-middle-income countries (9/15), and 100% of low-income countries (15/15).Interpretation: Nurse anesthetists are widely utilized providers of anesthetic care across all income categories and all major geographic regions. Their training duration varies significantly. High-income settings provide increased supervision compared to low-and middle-income settings. Future studies focused on health outcomes may provide the basis for consolidated models of anesthetic task shifting to address the surgical workforce crisis.