title: Basic cardiopulmonary resuscitation knowledge of house-officers in a tertiary institution: factors determining accuracy.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  To assess the level of knowledge of CPR among House-Officers (HO) and some factors determining accuracy of knowledge.
  
  
  METHODS
  A total of 50 structured questionnaires were administered to HO with 35 (70%) questionnaires duly filled and returned. Data on the participants' brief biodata and the understanding of basic skills of BLS were collected and analyzed using International Business Machine SPSS Statistics version 21 for Windows. The t-test for independent samples was applied for the grouped data with P < 0.05 taken as level of significance.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The age of the respondents ranged from 20-37 years with the mean age of 25.4 + SD2.7 years and the male/female ratio was 1:1.3. Eleven (31.4%) out of the 35 HO had no prior CPR training while 68.6% had prior training; Eighteen (51.4%) had training within the last 2 years. Twenty (57.1%) had performed CPR in a real situation, while 42.9% had not. Six (17.1%) HO scored above 50% while 82.9% scored below 50%. The female HO got more correct answers than the males (25% versus 6.7%, p = 0.167). The number of respondents who had prior CPR training had more correct answers than those who did not (25% versus 0%, p = 0.083) while those who had previously performed CPR had more correct answers than those who had not (33.3% versus 5%, P <0.05).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  There was a general poor knowledge of the performance of basic CPR amongst HOs. However, previous experience of having performed CPR in real setting, or the use of mannequins, improved their theoretical knowledge of CPR.
authors.affiliation: Department of Surgery, University of Port Harcourt Teaching Hospital, Rivers State, Nigeria.
authors.forename: Kelechi Emmanuel
authors.initials: KE
authors.lastname: Okonta
authors.affiliation: Department of Paediatrics and Child Health, University of Port Harcourt Teaching Hospital, Rivers State, Nigeria.
authors.forename: Boma Alali Ngozi
authors.initials: BA
authors.lastname: Okoh
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D016887:Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation / Q000193:education; D002983:Clinical Competence; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D005260:Female; D006323:Heart Arrest / Q000628:therapy*; D006801:Humans; D007396:Internship and Residency; D008297:Male; D009549:Nigeria; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D062606:Tertiary Care Centers; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Port-Harcourt; Resuscitation; house-Officers; tertiary Institution; training