A comparative study of defibrillation and cardiopulmonary resuscitation performance during simulated cardiac arrest in nursing student teams

We studied video-recorded simulations of D-CPR performance in 28 nursing student teams. Besides describing the overall performance of D-CPR, we compared D-CPR performance in two groups. Group A (n = 14) performed D-CPR in a simulated cardiac arrest scenario, while Group B (n = 14) performed D-CPR after first observing performance of Group A and participating in the debriefing. We developed a D-CPR checklist to assess team performance.Overall there were large variations in how accurately the nursing student teams performed the specific parts of the D-CPR algorithm. While few teams performed opening the airways and examination of breathing correctly, all teams used a 30:2 compression: ventilation ratio.We found no difference between Group A and Group B in D-CPR performance, either in regard to total points on the check list or to time variables.We found that none of the nursing student teams achieved top scores on the D-CPR-checklist. Observing the training of other teams did not increase subsequent performance. We think all this indicates that more time must be assigned for repetitive practice and reflection. Moreover, the most important aspects of D-CPR, such as early defibrillation and hands-off time in relation to shock, must be highlighted in team-training of nursing students.Nurses and nursing students must be able to respond correctly in the event of a cardiac arrest both inside and outside hospitals [1-4]. Most nursing education institutions have resuscitation training within their curricula to meet these expectations and to ensure that students are competent at commencing life support in cases of cardiac arrest. In spite of this, previous studies in the nursing research literature have described poor retention of knowledge and skills in performing resuscitation [3,5-7]. Several educational methods of improving cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) have been tried out but both content and methods lack standardization [3]. Nevertheless, simulation can be used to