Perceptions of establishing advanced life support for out-of-hospital cardiac arrest

Each year in the UK, approximately 30 000 patients receive resuscitation attempts by the emergency medical services (British Heart Foundation, Resuscitation Council UK and NHS England, 2015) because they have experienced an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA). Guidelines and consensus statements are regularly reviewed by various official organisations (Morley et al, 2015) and are intended to provide organisations and individuals with a clear format to deliver the advanced life support care bundle. Despite this, anecdotally, the translation of theory into clinical practice varies; this is perhaps unsurprising given the individuality of each patient's circumstances.

The vast majority of research on the subject of cardiac arrest is quantitative, focusing on single perimeter adjustments seeking statistical significance in patient mortality and morbidity (Gough and Nolan, 2018; Perkins et al, 2020; Wang et al, 2021). While there is no doubt regarding the value such research adds to clinical practice, there is a lack of data covering the full advanced life support (ALS) care bundle when delivered in the out-of-hospital setting.