Simulation and educationDistribution of pre-course BLS/AED manuals does not influence skill acquisition and retention in lay rescuers: A randomised study☆
Section snippets
Materials and methods
The training group comprised of ERC-certified Course Directors. Data were collected at the secretarial office of the Greek Society of CPR. Twenty-four ERC-BLS/AED courses were completed and 480 laypeople (20 participants per course) were instructed by the same group to ensure uniform training. The courses were organised at predetermined dates and were individually randomised using a computer-generated randomisation list. Using sealed envelopes, the list was implemented in 12 courses, where
Results
Of the 303 participants who completed the study, 147 had received the course manual (group A) and 156 had not (group B). Courses were held from September 2007 to June 2008, whereas re-evaluation was performed at predetermined dates at 1, 3 and 6 months after completion of each course. All participants in group A reported that they had studied the manual. Flow of participants through each stage is shown in Fig. 1. The demographic characteristics of the study population are shown in Table 1.
No
Discussion
The objectives of this study were to determine whether the distribution of the ERC-BLS/AED manual prior to each course has an effect on overall trainee performance, on trainee performance in separate BLS/AED skills, on theoretical knowledge and resuscitation skill retention. The results of this study confirm our primary hypothesis that BLS/AED manual distribution prior to the course does not have an effect on skill acquisition and retention and that BLS/AED courses without manuals are as
Conclusion
The present study shows that distribution of BLS/AED manuals prior to the course does not have an effect on theoretical knowledge, skill acquisition or skill retention in laypeople. This study adds some evidence to the existing literature of BLS/AED teaching. Further evaluation of these results should be held in the future to specify the optimal teaching method and identify in which cases manuals could be a valuable adjunct.
Conflict of interest statement
The authors of the article have no conflict of interest to declare.
Acknowledgements
The authors of the present study would like to thank Mrs Ioanna Tessi and Mrs Elia Delaporta, secretaries of the Greek Society of CPR, for managing these courses. Furthermore, we are extremely grateful to Mr Ioannis Vlachos for his expert advice on the statistical analysis.
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A Spanish translated version of the abstract of this article appears as Appendix in the final online version at doi:10.1016/j.resuscitation.2009.11.020.