title: Less is more. Possible ways to improve tuition of the recovery position.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To identify what 10-11-year-old children do and do not learn during a 10 min session teaching the recovery position, with a view to suggesting possible improvements in training.
  
  
  METHODS
  Participants were 148 boys and 144 girls. Before intervention, safety knowledge was assessed in a pencil and paper test. 198 children were taught the recovery position at a safety education centre. Three months later, their attempts to leave a casualty in a safe position were observed, and compared with the attempts of 94 children who had not received training.
  
  
  RESULTS
  19% of the control group and 31% of trained children successfully placed a casualty in the recovery position. Only two of the seven standard routine moves were used by more than 50% of trained children, namely raise the casualty's leg to a flexed position, roll the casualty on to his/her side. Even when performed, these and other individual moves were often not integrated into an effective routine.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The implication is that in a short session it is over-ambitious to attempt to teach a complex routine. It is more realistic to focus on a few moves which are easily learnt. The present results suggest that these should be flexing the leg and rolling the casualty on to his/her side. In this study, simply improving the participants' performance of these two moves could increase the number of learners who are successful from less than a third to nearly 50%.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Oxford Brookes University, Headington Campus, Gipsy Lane, Oxford, UK. msissons-joshi@brookes.ac.uk
authors.forename: Mary Sissons
authors.initials: MS
authors.lastname: Joshi
authors.forename: Roger
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Lamb
mesh_terms: D002648:Child; D005260:Female; D005392:First Aid; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D056888:Patient Positioning / Q000379:methods*; D013663:Teaching / Q000379:methods*; D006113:United Kingdom