Spotlight on Research

As the title alludes to, this study took place across 10 European emergency medical services with the aim of determining if real-time objective feedback, while training on manikins, improves CPR quality among professional pre-hospital EMS healthcare providers. The study also looked at whether competition between participating sites and, indeed, between the individual participants, had an effect on motivation to train, and improve performance (as has been suggested by other studies).

Standard protocols (European Resuscitation Council 2010 adult and paediatric guidelines) and standardised bag valve masks (BVM) were used, and identical manikins were provided to simulate both adult and infant scenarios for out-of-hospital cardiac arrests (OHCA). The study was carried out over two stages, 6 months apart.

Each of the 10 EMS sites recruited 20 pre-hospital healthcare professionals to participate in the study. Stage 1 provided objective assessment (for later analysis) of the participants' performance in standardised adult and infant cardiac arrest scenarios. Participants worked in two-person crews and no feedback was given during or after the scenarios.