190697 Comparing seventh and tenth grade students' willingness to perform CPR after a CPR anytime™ program

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

James E. Pointer, MD , Medical Director, Alameda County EMS, San Leandro, CA
Michael King , Director, Alameda County EMS, San Leandro, CA
Michael Jacobs , Prehospital Care Coordinator, Alameda County EMS, San Leandro, CA
Background

The American Heart Association's CPR Anytime™ kit is inexpensive (retail= $29) and teaches cardiopulmonary resuscitation, with the included manikin, in less than 30 minutes. The kit was designed to quickly train people to use CPR and to enable and encourage them to train friends and family. The overall objective of the current study was to enable as many seventh and tenth grade students as possible to subsequently perform CPR on a “real”cardiac arrest victim.

Methods

This prospective observational study compared performance between demographically-matched middle (7th graders, n=124) and high (10th graders, n=189) school students. After the training, conducted during regularly scheduled health science classes, students were asked to train as many friends and family as possible using the kit. Teacher/facilitators provided the kit and a survey form to each student to record demographic information, willingness to perform CPR on a “real” person after CPR Anytime™ training, and the number and relationships of the persons whom they subsequently trained.

Results

More seventh grade students (n= 98, 87.5%) than tenth grade students (n= 86, 45.5%) were willing to later perform CPR on a “real” person (p< .0001). In addition, 65 (52.4%) seventh graders stated they were prepared to perform “full” CPR (push and breathe) as compared to 61 (32.3%) tenth graders (p< .01).

Conclusions

Factors such as classroom distractions, “street” knowledge and experience regarding CPR, and health issues in general, demographics, and behavior might account for the seventh graders' superior performance. These results provide guidance to researchers for a selection of appropriate student populations for CPR training.

Learning Objectives:
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Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I have authored or co-authored more than 30 articles in the peer-review journals and have been a conference speaker on over 50 occasions. I was involved/responsible for research and analysis of project. I was principal author of the abstract and discussion.”
Any relevant financial relationships? No

I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.

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