Cardiopulmonary arrest (CRA) is the most serious event in the health area and its prompt recognition with the consequent initiation of cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) maneuvers are essential for the return of spontaneous circulation (ROSC). Despite the absence of robust epidemiological data, a meta-analysis of 141 studies including countries in North America, Europe, Asia and Oceania, demonstrated a ROSC rate below 30% in cases of out-of-hospital CA, and concluded that the chances of success were linked to the fact that the CPR was witnessed and in cases where CPR had been initiated by a bystander.

In Brazil, according to the guideline on Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation and Emergency Cardiovascular Care of the Brazilian Society of Cardiology, the survival rates of out-of-hospital CPA, when addressed within the first 5 minutes with early defibrillation, vary between 50% and 70% two. On the other hand, in the in-hospital environment, paradoxically, survival rates are less than 20%, probably due to associated clinical conditions and the greater severity of patients, which make asystole and pulseless electrical activity the most prevalent rhythms.

[…]

Abstract

Background:

Knowledge of cardiac arrest by health professionals is associated with sociodemographic, occupational and training characteristics.

Objectives:

To evaluate the factors associated with the knowledge of health professionals on Cardiac Arrest.

Methods:

A cross-sectional study conducted in a large public hospital in the countryside of Bahia – Brazil. The sample consisted of 18 doctors, 32 nurses and 50 nursing technicians. To evaluate the knowledge of the professionals, a questionnaire was constructed according to the current guidelines for resuscitation of the American Heart Association of 2015, and after that, it was submitted to three judges with expertise in PCR to verify content validity. Data were analyzed through descriptive statistics with univariate, bivariate and multivariate analyses using the logistic regression model. A value of p < 0.05 was adopted as level of significance.

Results:

The prevalence of insufficient knowledge of cardiac arrest among health professionals was 78%. After logistic regression, belonging to the professional category of nursing technician (p = 0.003) and nurse (p = 0.001) and working in the form of on-call duty for 24h (p = 0.005) was associated to insufficient knowledge.

Conclusions:

Insufficient knowledge of cardiac arrest among health professionals is high, which is a problem that requires urgent interventions in order to guarantee the quality of care. These actions should be based on realistic scenarios involving theoretical and practical activities. The periodicity of training should be short, given the deterioration of knowledge. The creation and validation of the data collection instrument allows for its applicability in other studies.