You have been asked to teach a skill station in an educational day for the junior medical staff on management of the difficult airway.
Scenario: An unexpected failed intubation in a hypoxic patient who is also difficult to ventilate with a bag-valve-mask (BVM). The patient has been given sedation and a non-depolarising neuromuscular blocker.
Participant: Junior ICU Registrar.
Guide the junior registrar through the appropriate steps following an unexpected failed intubation in a hypoxic patient, who is known to be difficult to BVM ventilate.
This viva focussed on the use of intubation aids for intubation and extubation in a patient with a difficult airway.
Disclaimer: the viva stem above may be an original CICM stem, acquired from their publicly available past papers. Or, perhaps it is a slightly altered version of the original CICM stem. Or, it is a completely original viva stem, concocted by the monstrously amoral author of Deranged Physiology for nothing more than his own personal amusement. In either case, because the college do not make the main viva text or marking criteria available, almost everything here has been confabulated. It might sound like a plausible viva and it could be used for the purpose of practice, but all should be aware that it does not represent the "true" canonical CICM viva station.