J Korean Soc Emerg Med.  2006 Feb;17(1):8-13.

The Retraining Effect and Retention of CPR Skill in Medical Students

• Park JW
• Sung CM
• Cho YS
• Choi YH
• Park IC
• Kim SH

Abstract

PURPOSE: This paper compares the CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation) skills of medical students with conventional training with those students without any previous training. We tried to evaluate if previous had any impact on CPR skills retention.
METHODS
Incoming 1st year medical students were provided conventional CPR instruction. At 18-23 months, we randomly retrained the subjects. Then we tested CPR performance skill at 26 months. Out of 151 subjects who received their first CPR instruction, 135 were available for testing at 26 months. Retraining group and control group was 55 and 80 respectively.
RESULTS
Overall performance was superior in the retrained group. The median score for retrained group and control group was 18(17-19) and 15(10-16).(p<0.001) For the retrained group, the percentage of adequate rescue breathing, reassessment, responsiveness assessment and compression were 100%, 98.2%, 96.4%, 92.7% respectively. For the control group, the percentage of adequate rescue breathing, adequate breathing, responsiveness assessment and compression were 91.2%, 73.8%, 68.8%, 60.0%.
CONCLUSION
The CPR skills seems to be retained for 8 months. Without any retraining the CPR skills could not be retained after 26 months. Therefore, retraining of CPR is a necessity, but more study is required in oder to find out the interval of retraining.

Keyword

Cardiopulmonary resuscitation; Education; Training

MeSH Terms

Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation*
Education
Humans
Respiration
Students, Medical*