A short step-by-step set-up walkthrough for each ventilator — power-up through to alarms — drawn from the manufacturers' own guides and training videos, and matched to the controls on screen in the simulator. Below the walkthroughs is a lesson on setting alarm limits that actually fire.
The ReVel is built around one gesture: highlight a control, then turn the scroll knob. Every parameter on the faceplate is reached the same way, so once you have that, the rest of the panel falls into place.
Lower control bar → On / Off key
Why it matters
Starting a new patient clears the previous patient's settings and delivered volumes, so you never inherit somebody else's tidal volume. This is the step crews skip when they are moving fast — and it is the one that causes harm.
Watch out
The Vent Inop lamp stays lit until ventilation actually starts. Check the battery state before you unplug, because the unit runs on its internal battery from that moment on.
An alarm limit is the only part of the ventilator that decides when to tell you something is wrong. Set it badly and the machine goes quiet exactly when you most need it to speak. The limits are yours to choose, and choosing them well is a skill in its own right — separate from choosing the settings.
The alarm never fires. A disconnection, a slow circuit leak, a tube that has migrated into the right mainstem — all of them produce silence, because the limits sit outside anything the patient will ever do. This is the dangerous error, and it is the quiet one: nothing on the ventilator tells you the alarm has been made useless.
If you cannot remember the last time a limit fired, it is probably set too wide.
The alarm fires on normal variation. Every cough, every sigh, every patient effort trips it, so the crew starts silencing it as a reflex. By the time the one alarm that mattered arrives, the silence key has already been pressed — before anyone read the message.
A limit that fires on a stable patient is training you to ignore it.
Secretions, a kinked tube, bronchospasm, a pneumothorax. The first number to move when something blocks the airway.
Alveolar over-distension. Every cmH2O above 30 adds to ventilator-induced lung injury — and it is the limit most often left wide open.
Disconnection, a circuit leak, and a lung that has suddenly stiffened. This is the limit that catches a tube coming out.
A patient in a spontaneous mode who has stopped breathing, or whose effort has fallen below the trigger threshold.
Tachypnea, auto-triggering, pain, rising metabolic demand — often the earliest sign that something is going wrong.
Circuit leak and disconnection. Hamilton documents this one at set PEEP + 5 cmH2O sustained for two consecutive breaths.
Gas trapping and auto-PEEP — the breath stacking that raises intrathoracic pressure and drops the blood pressure.
Desaturation while there is still time to act. Set it lower and you have bought yourself no warning at all.
The priority wording differs between manufacturers, and so does the length of the silence. Both are worth knowing before you need them — a silence key held down on a device that will not stay quiet is how a real alarm gets missed.
Priority levels
High priority: red, flashing lamp, a sequence of five beeps repeated. Medium: yellow, flashing, three beeps. Low: yellow, solid, two beep sequences and not repeated. A technical fault flashes red and the ventilator may drop into Safety ventilation or the Ambient state.
Silence — Audio pause
Mutes the audible alarm for two minutes; pressing it again cancels the pause. A technical fault cannot be silenced.
Priority levels
One alarm LED reports the highest condition in force: red for a high-priority alarm, yellow for medium or advisory, green when nothing is active. High priority means ventilation is no longer possible or is failing; medium means it is still being delivered but needs attention; advisory means safe ventilation continues with a fault worth knowing about. Every alarm brings a Smart Help message naming what to check.
Silence — MUTE / CANCEL
Silences the audible alarm for 30 seconds; it returns if the cause is still there. Some advisory alarms clear outright when it is pressed, while others leave the yellow LED lit to remind you of the fault. Alarms are also muted for the first 120 seconds after power-up so the patient circuit can be attached.
Priority levels
The ReVel names the active alarm on the Active line rather than relying on a light alone, so the screen tells you what the problem is. Silence/Reset buys time; the alarm returns while the condition persists.
Silence — Silence / Reset
Silences the alarm and restarts its timer. It does not cancel the underlying condition, so the alarm comes back if the cause is still there.
Alarm priorities and silence durations are quoted from the manufacturers' operator manuals. Limit values are standard critical-care starting points, not manufacturer specifications — your service's protocol always takes precedence.