Basic Life Support (BLS) Training by Homemade Manikin

Overview

The experimentally planned research was carried out between the dates of 01.06.2021-10.11.2021 with the students of ……………. Faculty of Health Sciences, Department of Nursing. The students, whose informed consent form was obtained beforehand, were provided to fill in the Participant Diagnosis Form and the Basic Life Support Information Evaluation Form questioning their demographic characteristics before the education. Afterward, with the e-learning method (Perculus 3 Virtual Classroom), the students have given Basic Life Support training in accordance with the AHA 2020 guidelines through a Powerpoint presentation. After the training, the information evaluation form was filled in again by the students in an electronic environment. Afterward, the students were shown how to make a Basic Life Support manikin with a pillow and plastic pet bottle, and the CPR performance was explained with the manikin. The students who made the performance in the home environment made a video recording and uploaded the videos they took to the system within 1 day. Two researchers who are experts in their fields made the video evaluations according to the basic life support performance evaluation form. Later, in the online debriefing session, the pros and cons of the training were discussed with the students, and after 1 month, knowledge and skills were evaluated again and the level of permanence on the subject was measured.

Cardiovascular diseases are in the first place among the causes of death, causing 31% (17.9 million) of all deaths worldwide. Considering deaths worldwide, 200,000 people can be revived each year with early cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and effective care thereafter. The International Liaison Committee on Resuscitation defines Basic Life Support (BLS) as "providing adequate circulation and respiration until advanced life support conditions are met to save lives and prevent worsening of the patient's condition in case of cardiopulmonary arrest. The critical period after the cessation of cardiac and respiratory function, in which vital signs disappear but the loss is reversible, is the subject of BLS. After sudden cardiac arrest, brain cells can only withstand oxygen deprivation for 3-5 minutes, so when BLS practice is started within the first four minutes, the survival rate is 29%, while when started after the first four minutes, the survival rate drops to 7%. Few of the patients who are revived after four minutes are able to maintain their previous quality of life. Effective implementation of this practice, which significantly reduces mortality and morbidity, is very important. It is very important that the knowledge and skills of the students of the nursing department, who have a high probability of encountering first aid applications due to their professional life and are expected to perform these applications correctly, are sufficient and up-to-date. As a reflection of this, First Aid and Emergency Care Nursing course have taken its place in the curriculum as a compulsory vocational course within the scope of the Nursing National Core Education Program in higher education institutions providing nursing education, and it has been provided to be carried out theoretically and practically. The quality of cardiopulmonary resuscitation includes providing adequate chest compressions, providing adequate depth of chest compressions, allowing chest reinstatement between compressions, minimizing interruptions in chest compressions, and avoiding excessive ventilation. Cardiopulmonary resuscitation training is carried out in laboratory environments, especially with cardiopulmonary resuscitation manikins. However, the difficulty of accessing these manikins and their high cost are especially important in recent days. The necessity brought by the recent pandemic process, or the difficulty of accessing manikins that require high resources in educational environments where the transition to e-learning is attempted, causes an increase in the knowledge and skills gap that already exists in this regard. Studies have reported that the effectiveness of BLS training decreases over time. It is expected that the education method supported by e-learning and accessible materials will contribute to the permanence of education by allowing the application to be repeated independently of time, place, and expensive materials. Homemade manikins developed with low-cost limited materials for CPR training began to be discovered many years ago but were not widely used. This study was conducted in order to measure the effectiveness and permanence of the CPR training given with homemade manikins in this period when e-learning became widespread.