Evaluating Effectiveness of YouTube Videos for Teaching Medical Students CPR: Solution to Optimizing Clinician Educator Workload during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

(1) Background: This study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of using a pre-existing video on CPR to support preclinical resuscitation education for medical students; (2) Methods: In total, 129 students selected to learn CPR using a pre-existing YouTube video or the conventional screencast video by their university faculties. All students responded to the pre- and post-training multiple-choice questionnaire on the basic knowledge of CPR, and, based on their responses, an analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) was conducted to assess the comparability of effectiveness across learning modalities. (3) Results: Among the students, 49 (38.0%) students selected the YouTube video to learn about CPR and were treated as the intervention group. The mean pre-test scores and post-test scores of the YouTube and the instructor’s video groups were 6.43 and 6.64, and 9.06 and 9.09, respectively. After controlling for the pre-test score effects, the results of ANCOVA did not show statistically significant differences between groups (p = 0.927), indicating comparable performance between groups that used YouTube and the instructor’s videos. (4) Conclusion: Utilizing YouTube videos is a useful teaching strategy for teaching CPR knowledge, which would reduce the burden on faculty of creating screencast lecture videos for online learning on resuscitation.