American Lung Association and Cleveland Clinic Provide Advanced COVID-19 Resources for Healthcare Providers

Today, the American Lung Association and Cleveland Clinic announced an educational collaboration to disseminate free, comprehensive resources on COVID-19 care for healthcare providers globally. The resources inform best practices to care for critically ill patients in a variety of clinical settings during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The robust inventory of online evidence-based modules and quick reference guides, developed by a multidisciplinary team of Cleveland Clinic experts, is hosted in Cleveland Clinic’s Respiratory and Education institutes’ Comprehensive COVID Care platform. The American Lung Association’s support of this comprehensive resource for healthcare providers is made possible through the organization’s $25M investment in the COVID-19 Action Initiative. These resources expand the organization’s existing science-based resources on COVID-19 for the public at Lung.org/covid-19.

“Too many lives have been lost to COVID-19. As our nation and world face the pandemic, our healthcare providers need and deserve support and advanced training specific to this new virus,” said American Lung Association President and CEO Harold Wimmer. “To save more lives and protect our frontline workers, we need to equip our nation’s healthcare providers with the most recent and up-to-date knowledge about COVID-19. The American Lung Association is proud to provide educational resources for healthcare providers about COVID-19.”

This educational platform assists interprofessional and interdisciplinary teams to standardize practices in the care of patients during the COVID-19 pandemic. The web-based learning platform provides up-to-date, relevant and easy-to-access information germane to the position where a provider might be deployed. The resource has been categorized into three groups:

• COVID-19 Caregiver Resource for healthcare workers who provide care to COVID patients. Features ICU and non-ICU management guidelines to be used both in preparations for deployment and as a real-time management guide in the care of COVID-positive patients. Includes resources on different procedures for airway management, vascular access, mechanical ventilation and key modifications to current advanced care life support processes specific to the COVID patient experiencing cardiac arrest. 
• Approaches to the Non-COVID Patient addresses a wide variety of critical care and non-critical care topics appropriate for providers in both the ICU and non-ICU inpatient settings. These modules are intended to be used as a primer for pre-surge provider preparation and as refresher materials. Each major section includes both disease-specific and process-specific modules or guides.
• Just-in-Time is intended to be used by providers as a care management reference guide. These provide quick access to a wide range of checklists, how-to guides and quick references on disease state, diagnosis, preventive measures and strategies for patient care and treatment. 

“Cleveland Clinic is pleased to share our advanced COVID-19 resources through this unique educational relationship with the American Lung Association,” said Sumita Khatri, M.D., M.S., Vice Chair of Mission Programs for the American Lung Association and Director of the Asthma Center at Cleveland Clinic. “By vetting and disseminating the highest quality information about the virus and how to care for patients with COVID-19 to tens of thousands of healthcare providers nationwide, best practices and preventive measures can be put into place and more lives will ultimately be saved.”

“The opportunity to offer educational materials broadly about a pressing world problem like COVID-19 closely aligns with the educational mission of Cleveland Clinic, which is ‘further education of those who serve’,” said James K. Stoller, M.D., M.S., Chair of the Education Institute at Cleveland Clinic. “This collaboration between the Lung Association and colleagues in the Respiratory and the Education institutes at Cleveland Clinic embodies this commitment to education. We are pleased to be able to offer this important resource that has been viewed by users in 105 countries to date.”

All learning activities are independent education activities and carry CME certification by Cleveland Clinic’s Center for Continuing Medical Education. The Center is an ACCME-accredited provider with commendation status. The approximate credits proposed for these activities currently include 64 online modules, each earning between 0.5 to 2 AMA PRA Category 1 credits, based on the length of the activity.