Note: Your progress in watching these videos WILL NOT be tracked. These training videos are the same videos you will experience when you take the full ProPALS program. You may begin the training for free at any time to start officially tracking your progress toward your certificate of completion.

  1. Course Objectives and Completion Requirements

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This ProPALS course is specifically for healthcare providers who directly participate in the management of respiratory and cardiovascular emergencies in pediatric patients. In this lesson, we'll explain the course objectives and what you'll gain from the course, along with what's required to complete the course.

The Goal of ProPALS

The goal of this PALS course is two-fold:

  1. Assessment – to train all healthcare providers to recognize respiratory emergencies, shock, and cardiopulmonary emergencies in pediatric patients.
  2. Treatment – to train all healthcare providers to intervene with high-quality individual and team skills.

Your ProPALS Objectives

After successfully completing ProPALS, you should be able to provide the following skills and knowledge to all pediatric patients.

  1. Recognize the early signs of cardiac arrest and begin CPR within 10 seconds of beginning your primary assessment.
  2. Perform the highest quality CPR per the current basic life support (BLS) guidelines and recommendations.
  3. Identify whether or not the patient requires immediate intervention.
  4. Provide pediatric advanced life support per the current guidelines and recommendations.
  5. Recognize and treat pediatric respiratory distress and failure.
  6. Identify and provide treatment for both compensated and decompensated shock in pediatric patients.
  7. Interpret core arrhythmias and manage all stable and unstable pediatric patients using all appropriate medications and electrical therapy.
  8. Describe all the signs and symptoms of unstable pediatric patients with an arrhythmia.
  9. Perform as an effective team leader, apply the use of proper team dynamics, and implement post-cardiac arrest management.

Pro Tip #1: To be successful in the ProPALS course, you should already have a foundation of previously acquired advanced level skills.

Your ProPALS Skills Mastery

Depending on your licensure level and areas of expertise, you will be expected to be proficient in the following skills.

  • Placing an advanced airway in a pediatric patient, such as an endotracheal tube
  • Obtaining vascular access using an IO or an IV
  • Recognizing basic arrhythmias
  • Performing defibrillation and cardioversion
  • Knowing basic PALS pharmacology information, including:
    • Indications
    • Contraindications
    • Advanced life support medications
    • Approved methods for administering those medications

The Completion of ProPALS

There are three parts of the ProPALS course that need to be completed:

  1. Complete all video training.
  2. Pass all the skills scenarios with a perfect score.
  3. Take and pass the final exam.

Video Training

Though video training will be instrumental for most of you, it is not a strict requirement for those of you who are taking this course for recertification reasons. (Though it pays to make sure you know all current guidelines, as these tend to change.)

If you feel confident that you've retained all of your PALS information from a previous trip through this course, you may opt to skip the video training.

Skills Scenarios

It's important that you're able to pass all skills scenarios, and for this reason, we've set up ProPALS so that you cannot take the final exam until all skills scenarios have been passed with perfect scores of 100 percent.

In these simulated case skills scenarios, you'll have the opportunity to interact and put your PALS knowledge into practice, as you actively participate as the team leader. The skills scenarios will allow you to practice identifying and treating pediatric conditions by applying a systematic approach to pediatric assessment using current PALS algorithms and practicing effective resuscitation team dynamics.

Why must you score 100 percent on all skills scenarios before moving on to the final exam?

Pediatric advanced life support includes extremely critical and precise techniques, medications, dosages, and procedures. You know how getting close is good enough when playing horseshoes? With PALS, extreme precision is the only thing that's good enough.

One day, you'll be very thankful for your mastery of the vital skills scenarios that you'll gain from these strict course requirements.

Pro Tip #2: As healthcare professionals ourselves, we know that you don't want to take any chances or unnecessary risks, and this includes not being exactly sure what to do in all situations. Remember, not recognizing a condition or responding incorrectly could literally be the difference between someone living and someone dying.

Final Exam

After watching all the video training and scoring perfect scores on all skills scenarios, it's time to take the final exam. And pass it, of course!

Some Tips that may Help You

The video training is a valuable tool to help you gain real-world knowledge of pediatric advanced life support skills. Remember, they're always available, so you can review them whenever you like and as many times as you need.

However, we also have a ProPALS student manual that you can download and review. The manual includes information on PALS treatment algorithms and ECG recognition and even some additional information that the videos do not. Sadly, not all material works perfectly in a video format.

You'll be much better served by using the student manual in conjunction with the video content. However, if you don't use the manual and you find yourself with questions or feeling like you're missing out on crucial content, there's a good chance you'll find those answers and some finer details in the manual.

In case you missed the link to the student manual, you can download your copy here. (coming soon)