JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Cardiac arrest is the most time-critical emergency medical students and junior physicians may face in their personal or professional life. However, many studies have shown that most of them lack the necessary knowledge and skills to efficiently perform resuscitation. This could be related to the fact that advanced life support (ALS) courses are not always part of the undergraduate medical curriculum.

Objective:

The aim of this study was to describe the development, pilot implementation and assessment of an ALS course designed to enable senior medical students to manage the initial resuscitation phase in case of cardiac arrest.

Methods:

An introductory ALS course was developed on the initiative of fifth-year medical students, in collaboration with the prehospital emergency medical service team of the Geneva University Hospitals. The 60 slots available to the 157 members of the fifth-year promotion of the University of Geneva Faculty of Medicine were filled in less than 8 hours. This unexpected success prompted the creation of a first questionnaire which was sent to the whole promotion to determine the overall proportion of students interested in following an ALS course. This questionnaire was also used to assess basic life support education and experience among course participants. A post-course questionnaire was used to gather feedback regarding the course and to assess student confidence regarding the resuscitation skills they had been taught.

Results:

Seventy-three fifth-year medical students completed the first questionnaire (73/157 46.5%). Most thought that the current BLS-AED curriculum did not provide them enough knowledge and skills regarding resuscitation and 84.9% (62/73) wished to attend an introductory ALS course. All the participants who would have wanted to follow the full ACLS course before graduating were set back by its cost (10/10, 100%). Of the 60 students who had registered for the training sessions, 56 (93.3%) actually attended. The post-course questionnaire was completed by 42 students (out of 48 who had registered on the platform, 87.5%). They unanimously answered that an ALS course should be part of the standard curriculum.

Conclusions:

This study demonstrates the interest of senior medical students in an ALS course and their willingness to see such a course integrated as part of their regular curriculum.