Study on Awareness of Basic Life Support/ Cardio Pulmonary Resuscitation among Medical Undergraduate Students in Nashik

Background: Basic Life Support (BLS)/Cardio Pulmonary Resuscitation (CPR) is a core skill in which all health care professionals should be proficient, in case of an emergency to save lives. It is logical to provide BLS training during undergraduate years ensuring basic competence in all graduating healthcare students. Objectives: The present research was undertaken with an objective to know the knowledge of BLS and awareness about BLS among medical students in Nashik. Methods and Materials: This cross sectional study was carried out among randomly selected 358 medical undergraduate students. Pre-tested semi-structured questionnaire was used to collect data. The questionnaire included the following parts: 1. Basic characteristics of the study participants, 2. Knowledge about BLS/CPR, 3. Awareness about BLS/CPR. The components of knowledge and awareness based questions were scored. The data was analyzed using SPSS version12. Results: The majority (87.8%) of students had heard of BLS/CPR, among them 40.6% could give the correct order of performing CPR as per the AHA guidelines (Year 2010). Only 20% of students had undergone prior training in BLS while 19.7% had been in a situation that needed BLS/CPR. Overall awareness was not favorable and approximately 68.9% of the students were no tconfident of performing BLS/CPR. Only 46.5% of students had adequate knowledge about BLS/CPR. Conclusions: The major lack of knowledge and awareness is due to lack of training. Hence it is essential to train the students in CPR/BLS early in the curriculum to improve their knowledge and repeated training would increase their confidence.