Hospital employees improve basic life support skills and confidence with a personal resuscitation manikin and a 24-min video instruction.

INTRODUCTION

The use of a personal resuscitation manikin with video instruction is reportedly as effective as traditional instructor-led courses in teaching lay people basic life support (BLS). We applied this method to an entire hospital staff to determine its effect on their practical and self-judged BLS skills.

METHODS

All 5382 employees at Stavanger University Hospital were asked to learn or refresh their BLS skills with the personal resuscitation manikin and video instruction. Prior to and nine months after training, all employees were asked to rate their BLS skills on a scale from one to five. Additionally, randomly chosen study subjects were tested for BLS skills pre-training and six months post-training during 2min of resuscitation on a manikin.

RESULTS

In total, 5118 employees took part in the BLS training program. The number of correct chest compressions increased significantly from 60 (5-102) to 119 (75-150) in the pre- vs. post-training periods, respectively, P<0.01, but the number of correct MTM ventilations did not change. Self-reported BLS skills increased from 3.1 (+/-1.0) pre-training to 3.8 (+/-0.8) post-training, P=0.031.

CONCLUSION

After distributing a personal resuscitation manikin with video instruction to an entire hospital staff, the median number of correctly performed chest compressions doubled and self-confidence in BLS skills improved significantly. This is a simple and less time-consuming method than instructor-led courses in preparing hospital employees in the basic handling of cardiac arrest.