The Skills of Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation in Some Professional and Student Teachers Compared

Background/Aim of Study: Training of practising professional and student teachers in CPR is very central, if the idea of introducing CPR training in Nigerian school system and by extension possibly the number of bystander CPR providers for OHCA in line with the international standard will ever be effective. The objective of this study was to compare the skills of CPR of some practising professional and undergraduate student teachers in Nigeria.

Study Design: Cohort experimental study

Place and Duration of the Study: Department of Human Kinetics and Health Education, Faculty of Education, University of Port Harcourt between September, 2016 and June, 2017.

Methodology: Two cohorts of some practising professional teachers and undergraduate students (each having 41 participants) were recruited into the study. The cohorts were differently exposed to identical scenarios of carrying out CPR skills on cardiac arrest victims simulated using manikins before CPR training and after. Their pre-training and post-training skills in CPR were assessed by a certified CPR instructor. The training was in line with the American Heart Association (AHA) conventional CPR teaching standard and the data collation was done using a modified AHA CPR Skills Evaluation Guide.

Results: Their pre-training CPR skills were significantly comparably poor (P >.05), but the undergraduate student teachers significantly had better post-training CPR skills than the practising professional teachers (P <.001).

Conclusion: Although the professional and student teachers had significantly poor CPR skills before training, their post-training skills in CPR were improved significantly and the student teachers significantly improved better in the post-training CPR skills than the practising professional teachers.