The ability of children to retain basic life support skills: a pilot study

Background: Lives can be and have been saved by children who have been taught Basic Life Support (BLS) techniques. The American Heart Association (AHA) advocates for mandatory BLS resuscitation training and the World Health Organization (WHO) has encouraged BLS training for two hours per year for children age 12 or younger worldwide. Purpose: Following initial training, an assessment of the retention levels over a six-week period of children ages 9-12 in BLS were calculated prior to the rendering of any remediation. Method: Quasi-experimental, one group repeated measures design. A repeated measure paired t-test will be used to analyze the data. Children 11-12 years old were taught AHA BLS skills for a total of two hours divided over one day per week within a two-week period. The AHA BLS skill post-test (Test-1) was immediately administered after the second BLS skills instructional class. The same AHA BLS skills post-test (Test-2) was administered six weeks later. Data Collection: Retention was described by the mean by the scores of the two identical AHA BLS skills post-tests (Test-1 and 2) (Appendix I) given 6-weeks apart that were placed on the BLS DNP project Code Sheet (A) and (B) (Appendix J and K) respectively prior to the rendering of any remediation (re-instruction). A repeated measure paired t-test was used to analyze the data using Microsoft Excel Spread Sheet to compare the two mean scores. Results: t= (10) = 2.27, p = 0.208 therefore with a higher value than p=0.05 there was no statistical significance in the data analysis results of this DNP project. Conclusion: The objective of this project was to evaluate the retention level of children 9-12 years old over a 6-week period for BLS skills. There was no degradation in scores. The results from the data analysis revealed that the DNP project and intervention was a success.DNPIncludes bibliographical reference