Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation among Nursing Staff At A Tertiary Health Facility: A Cross-Sectional Study

Background: Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (CPR) is an emergency life-saving care to restore blood circulation following cardiac arrest. Nurses are often the closest when cardiac arrest occurs, thus their competence and initiation of CPR could be life-saving. Aim: To evaluate the knowledge, attitude and willingness to initiate CPR among nurse practitioners. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted; participants were nursing staff at the University of Ilorin Teaching Hospital, Ilorin, Nigeria. Nursing students and other healthcare workers were excluded from the study. Multistage sampling method was used and all participants completed a self-administered questionnaire after informed consent. Data analysis was with SPSS version 21.0 and p<0.05 was significant. Results: Among the 220 participants, 35(15.9%) were ≤5years post-qualification, 100(45.5%) had sub-specialty training, awareness about CPR was 100%, 66(30%) showed good knowledge on the practice of CPR, 154(70%) had formal training on CPR, 112 (50.9%) of the training were during schooling while 182(82.7%) showed good attitude towards initiating CPR when indicated. Hindrances to initiation of CPR included lack of training (56.2%), heavy workload (47.3%), inadequate knowledge (42.8%), lack of equipment (41.8%) and difficulty establishing diagnosis of cardiac arrest (13.9%). Competence grading for CPR was 48.4% for participants with surgical, 40.0% for medical subspecialty training and 44.2% for non-subspecialists. There was statistical significant relationship between competence in CPR and knowledge about it (p=0.026).   Conclusion: Knowledge and practice of CPR among nurses was low; health institutions and the mandatory nursing professional development programs should prioritize post-qualification training of nurses in the life-saving skills of CPR.