Article Published In Vol.4 (March-April-2016)

Awareness and Knowledge of Health-College Students of Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation at Taif University, Saudi Arabia

Author : Khaled Abdallah Khader, PhD, RN, Abdulrahman N. Al-Ghamdi, M.D., Hanan A. M. Youssef, PhD, RN, Ahmad A.I. Elryah, PhD, RN, Ibrahim R. Ayasreh, Msc, RN, Nabeel A. Al-Mawajdeh, Msc, RN, Ahmad Alradi Mohammed, Msc, RN

Introduction: Cardiac arrest is the cause of death for thousands of people. Knowledge of Cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and practice of simple CPR techniques increase the chances of survival of the patient until experienced medical help arrives. Most victims of cardiac arrest don’t receive adequate resuscitation within the critical time which reduces the chance of survival. Therefore, it is crucial that everyone in the medical field has knowledge of CPR. The purpose of this study was to assess awareness and knowledge of health-college students about CPR at Taif University.
Methods: A cross-sectional survey was used to study 320 health-college students selected conveniently from Taif University. A 20 items questionnaire developed by the researchers was used to collect data about awareness of participants of CPR. The validity and reliability of questionnaire was tested and proved. All ethical issues like consent form and anonymity were considered. Data were analyzed using SPSS (ver. 16) to get descriptive and inferential data of the questionnaires.
Results: Most participants scored less than 50%. There were significant (p<0.05) differences among health colleges, program and year of study program. Nursing students got the highest score among all participants. In addition, students of the bridging program had higher score than regular students. All questions were answered correctly by at least third of participants. Low rate of correct answers were found in infant CPR, steps of doing CPR and update information of CPR.
Discussion: The result of current study reveals lack of awareness of CPR in most health colleges’ students. This agreed with most previous studies. Despite significant differences among medical profession in their CPR scores, they didn’t reach the acceptable level of awareness. The reason for low scores of CPR survey is lack of theoretical and clinical training of up-to-date CPR in health colleges’ curricula. This study recommended giving adequate BLS knowledge and training for all health professionals and included a BLS course in the curricula of health colleges.

Keywords: CPR, BLS, Cardiopulmonary resuscitation, cardiac arrest, awareness, health college