Abstract

Introduction: One of the barriers to improving cardiac arrest survival is the low rate of cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) provision. Identifying this as a public health issue, many medical students often assist in training the community in CPR. However, these experiences are often short and are not associated with structured resuscitation education, limiting the student’s and the community's learning. In this assessment, we identified a need and developed a curriculum, including defined goals and objectives, for an undergraduate medical education (UME) elective in CPR.Methods: At an academic university environment with a strong UME program, we developed a longitudinal UME elective in CPR. The curriculum is a four-year longitudinal experience, which satisfies two weeks of their fourth year of medical school. The curriculum includes structured training over the four-year period in the fundamentals of resuscitation science (through didactics, journal club, and hands-on skills training), in addition to structured community CPR teaching. The elective concludes with a final hands-on summative appraisal. Data concerning medical student program enrollment, CPR training events conducted, venues of events, and the number of individuals trained were collected over a five-year period.Results: The CPR elective was developed with clear goals and objectives based on identified needs. Over the five-year period, 186 medical students completed the CPR longitudinal elective, accounting for 8.4% of the total medical student population. Students completed curriculum requirements and satisfied both didactic and hands-on training with all students passing the final summative appraisal. Over the five-year period, students trained 8,694 people in bystander CPR. The summative evaluation had a 100% pass rate.Conclusion: Implementation of a longitudinal CPR elective improved resuscitation science education for medical students and fostered increased community CPR training. This describes one local effort to improve resuscitation science education and training for medical students. Further work will need to be done to evaluate the impact of UME resuscitation curricula on medical student career choice and resuscitation outcomes.

Highlights

  • One of the barriers to improving cardiac arrest survival is the low rate of cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) provision

  • As medical student interest in resuscitation increases, as well as the need for sufficient knowledge to train others in CPR, a structured program that is integrated into the undergraduate medical education (UME) curriculum is needed

  • Though significant data exists on improving CPR performance metrics through training and debriefing [11,12,13,14], there is a paucity of knowledge on best practices and curricula for developing sustainable long-term resuscitation education programs

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Summary

Introduction

One of the barriers to improving cardiac arrest survival is the low rate of cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) provision Identifying this as a public health issue, many medical students often assist in training the community in CPR. These experiences are often short and are not associated with structured resuscitation education, limiting the student’s and the community's learning. Survival from cardiac arrest has had minimal improvement over the last 30 years with overall survival rates ranging from 6.7% to 8.4% with 2015 estimates showing continued improvement equaling 10.6% [1,2] This low survival rate has continued despite nationwide CPR teaching initiatives, dispatcher-assisted CPR programs, and increased focus on community involvement and outreach [3,4,5]. Though significant data exists on improving CPR performance metrics through training and debriefing [11,12,13,14], there is a paucity of knowledge on best practices and curricula for developing sustainable long-term resuscitation education programs

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