Education and age affect skill acquisition and retention in lay rescuers after a European Resuscitation Council CPR/AED course.
OBJECTIVE
To examine whether education and age affect skill acquisition and retention in lay rescuers after a European Resuscitation Council (ERC) CPR/AED course.


BACKGROUND
Because of the importance of bystander CPR/AED skills in the setting of cardiac arrest, acquisition and retention of resuscitation skills has gained a great amount of interest.


METHODS
The ERC CPR/AED course format for written and practical evaluation was used. Eighty lay people were trained and evaluated at the end of the course, as well as at one, three, and six months.


RESULTS
Retention of CPR/AED skills improved over time, recording the lowest practical scores at one month after initial training and the lowest written scores at initial training. In practical evaluation scores, when examined longitudinally, age presented a significant adverse effect and higher background education presented a non-significant positive effect. Moreover, regarding written evaluation scores, when examined longitudinally, education presented a significant positive effect while age did not significantly correlate with written scores.


CONCLUSIONS
Education and age affected retention of CPR/AED skills in lay rescuers. Also, our results suggest that the ERC CPR/AED course format may be poorly designed to discriminate between participants with different levels of practical and written resuscitation skills and merit a thorough investigation in future studies.
National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Medical School, MSc "Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation", Athens, Greece.
Konstantina
K
Papalexopoulou
National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Medical School, MSc "Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation", Athens, Greece. Electronic address: thanoschalkias@yahoo.gr.
Athanasios
A
Chalkias
National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Medical School, MSc "Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation", Athens, Greece.
Ioannis
I
Dontas
National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Medical School, MSc "Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation", Athens, Greece.
Paraskevi
P
Pliatsika
National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Medical School, MSc "Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation", Athens, Greece.
Charalampos
C
Giannakakos
National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Medical School, MSc "Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation", Athens, Greece.
Panagiotis
P
Papapanagiotou
National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Medical School, MSc "Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation", Athens, Greece.
Afroditi
A
Aggelina
National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Medical School, MSc "Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation", Athens, Greece.
Theodoros
T
Moumouris
University of Ioannina, School of Medicine, Department of Anesthesiology, Ioannina, Greece.
Georgios
G
Papadopoulos
National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Medical School, MSc "Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation", Athens, Greece.
Theodoros
T
Xanthos
D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D016887:Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation / Q000193:education* / Q000379:methods; D047548:Defibrillators; D004522:Educational Status; D005260:Female; D006323:Heart Arrest / Q000628:therapy; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D012153:Retention, Psychology; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D014838:Volunteers; D055815:Young Adult
AED; BLS; Basic life support; CPR; ERC; European Resuscitation Council; Lay rescuers; Skill acquisition; Skill retention; Training; automated external defibrillator; basic life support; cardiopulmonary resuscitation