Diferencias de conocimientos de soporte vital avanzado al final de grado entre estudiantes de Medicina y Enfermería

Introduction

Sudden cardiac arrest is one of the leading causes of death in Spain. The performance of cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) techniques is crucial for the survival. Therefore, it is considered relevant that nursing and medical students have sufficient knowledge to carry out these maneuvers. The objective of this study is to analyze the level of knowledge in advanced life support and CPR of final year nursing and medicine students.

Material and methods

A transversal and comparative study was conducted to assess the knowledge on CPR techniques in 97 students of final year nursing and medical studies (Academic year 2022–2023). A 21-items questionnaire was carried including sociodemographic variables, previous experience in CPR, self-assessment of competence, technical knowledge of CPR, identification of cardiac arrest rhythms, pharmacology in advance vital support (AVS) and final self-perception of competence.

Results

In the comprehensive analysis, no statistically significant differences were observed between the two groups of students. There were also no differences between medical and nursing participants in the percentage of correct responses in the CPR techniques (75% versus 73%). However, in recognizing cardiac arrest rhythms, a statistically significant difference in favor of medical students was observed (81.4% versus 63.5%; p = 0.001). The nursing group outperformed the medical group in responses to pharmacology questions (95.2% versus 70.6%; p = 0.038). Finally, self-perception of knowledge of AVS decreased significantly after completing the questionnaire (nursing: p = 0.001; medicine: p = 0.002).

Conclusions

Students in the final years of Nursing and Medicine degrees have very similar knowledge, of a medium-high theoretical level, about CPR techniques. However, the nursing students obtained better results in SVA pharmacology, but lower than the medicine students in the interpretation of cardiac arrest rhythms on the ECG.