Education Retention of Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation Skills after Hands-only Training versus Conventional Training in Novices: A Randomized Controlled Trial

ABSTRACT

PURPOSE: Cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) training can improve performance during simulated cardiac arrest; however, retention of skills after training remains uncertain. Recently, hands-only CPR has been shown to be as effective as conventional CPR. The purpose of this study was to compare the retention rate of CPR skills in laypersons between the two hands-only and conventional CPR training methods. METHODS: Participants were randomly assigned to one of the two training groups The hands-only CPR group with 80 minutes of training or the conventional CPR group with 180 minutes of training. The CPR skills for each participant were evaluated at the end of the training session and at 3 months thereafter, using the Resusci Anne® manikin with a skillreporting software. RESULTS: A total of 252 participants completed the training sessions; of which, 125 participants were in the hands-only CPR group and 127 in the conventional CPR group. After 3 months, 118 participants were randomly selected to complete a post-training test. The hands-only CPR group showed a significant decrease in the average compression rate (p=0.015), average compression depth (p=0.031), and proportion of adequate compression depth (p=0.011). Contrastingly, there were no differences with respect to the retention of skills in the conventional CPR group after 3 months. CONCLUSION: The conventional CPR training appears to be more effective with respect to retention of chest compression skills compared with hands-only CPR training; however, the retention of artificial ventilation skills after conventional CPR training remains poor.