title: The willingness of final year medical and dental students to perform bystander cardiopulmonary resuscitation in an Asian community.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Despite the importance of early effective chest compressions to improve the chance of survival of an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest victim, it is still largely unknown how willing our Malaysian population is to perform bystander cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR).
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  We conducted a voluntary, anonymous self-administered questionnaire survey of a group of 164 final year medical students and 60 final year dental students to unravel their attitudes towards performing bystander CPR.
  
  
  METHODS
  Using a 4-point Likert scale of "definitely yes," "probably yes," "probably no," and "definitely no," the students were asked to rate their willingness to perform bystander CPR under three categories: chest compressions with mouth-to-mouth ventilation (CC + MMV), chest compressions with mask-to-mouth ventilation (CC + PMV), and chest compressions only (CC). Under each category, the students were given ten hypothetical victim scenarios. Categorical data analysis was done using the McNemar test, chi-square test, and Fisher exact test where appropriate. For selected analysis, "definitely yes" and "probably yes" were recoded as a "positive response."
  
  
  RESULTS
  Generally, we found that only 51.4% of the medical and 45.5% of the dental students are willing to perform bystander CPR. When analyzed under different hypothetical scenarios, we found that, except for the scenario where the victim is their own family member, all other scenarios showed a dismally low rate of positive responses in the category of CC + MMV, but their willingness was significantly improved under the CC + PMV and CC categories.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  This study shows that there are unique sociocultural factors that contribute to the reluctance of our students to perform CC + MMV.
authors.affiliation: Emergency Medicine Department, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Kubang Kerian, Kelantan, Malaysia. cksheng74@yahoo.com
authors.forename: Keng Sheng
authors.initials: KS
authors.lastname: Chew
authors.forename: Mohd Noh Abu
authors.initials: MN
authors.lastname: Yazid