Background: Basic life support (BLS) is an integral part of health care. However, teaching of BLS is not yet a part of protocolized curriculum and uniform throughout. The present study is designed to assess the knowledge, attitude and practice of BLS and compare it among trained and untrained medical students and junior doctors in a medical institute. Methods: After approval from Institute Ethical Committee and informed consent from the participant, the present study was conducted among the undergraduate-level medical and nursing students and junior doctors. A questionnaire consisting of 30 questions based on knowledge, attitude and practice of BLS was used to collect data which is evaluated as per scale defined for this study. Statistical significance was assessed using INSTAT software (GraphPad Software, Inc., La Zolla, USA). Results: Only 16.41% of all participants and 52% of doctors have received class and/or hands on training. The untrained participants have scored poorly as compared to trained participants in theoretical knowledge and practice of BLS (24.36 % and 53.45% versus 9.25 % and 24.07%) respectively. The mean score for both theoretical knowledge and practice of BLS for trained students was higher than that of the untrained participants and the statistical difference was highly significant-p<0.0001. Most of the participants of both trained and untrained group were having very good attitude towards BLS. Conclusions: Knowledge and practice skills of BLS/CPR are poor in medical and nursing students. A significant portion of trainees do not acquire adequate knowledge in a single session of training. An organised curriculum for BLS and its protocolized training is the need of the hour in medical education.

What was done The tutorial session was conducted in the usual fashion and, at the end, the group of students listening to the presentation were asked to evaluate their peer (the presenter) using a structured format. The evaluation form was graded from A to E (poor, fair, good, very good and excellent) and tested different parameters of the presentation, namely: the content, how understandable it was (language), speech (how coherent it was), style, interactive strategy, explanation, use of multimedia ⁄ audiovisuals, recent literature back-up and illustrations. Feedback was given to the presenter. Evaluation of resultsThe study demonstrated the successful use of this peer evaluation strategy in small group teaching. With the introduction of the peer evaluation format, we noted increased interaction from the participants. It showed that using such an exercise stimulated and activated interactive learning among the students, reflected by their positive attitude and response.We piloted our intervention on 2 groups. In both sessions, the presenters were given feedback from their peer evaluation. Despite the few negative remarks, the presenters felt good about the overall feedback and appreciated the new approach. They thought that the comments made by their colleagues on their areas of deficiencies would be useful for their future presentations. With the proven success of our intervention, we suggest further use of peer evaluation in other venues of medical teaching to enhance rapport between students and teachers.

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