Study of the Variables of Local Healthcare Personnel Linked to Becoming a Formal Public CPR Instructor in Baoan, Shenzhen, China

Abstract

Abstract Background Public Cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) education is important to increase the survival rate of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA). In this study, we survey local healthcare personnel in China who met the requirements of becoming public CPR instructors to assess their level of knowledge and attitudes toward teaching CPR. Materials and Methods To find qualified public CPR instructors among the local healthcare personnel, we ran three training sessions between March 2018 and December 2018. We held three courses on selecting public CPR instructors from the local healthcare personnel (n = 496). We also surveyed candidates for public CPR instructors before making our final choice. The selected instructors were retrained for a single day in December 2021. The necessary information was exchanged with the members of the passing group, and the maintained valuables were investigated. Results Public CPR instructors certified 428 cases (86.49%) after the final exam. The results showed that the emergency group had a higher success rate than the non-emergency group (control group) (175, 90.7% vs. 253, 83.8%; P = 0.042). Here, we conducted a binary logistic regression analysis to determine the relationship between 15 survey variables and the passing rate. The variables, such as financial incentives, prior automatic external defibrillator (AED) training, and younger age were independently affected by being public CPR instructors. Despite this, 246 instructors (57.9%) still attended the retraining courses in 2021, with significantly more instructors in the emergency group than those in the non-emergency group (111, 64.5% vs. 135, 53.4%; P = 0.022). Furthermore, the instructors who were not incentivized financially were less likely to switch between the emergency and non-emergency groups (96, 79.33% vs. 116, 86.56%; P = 0.990). Conclusion The Chinese emergency team can serve as a model for the local healthcare personnel by training and leading a group of volunteer CPR instructors. Our research has practical implications for China's national CPR education policy by informing the scheduling of regional public CPR education programs.