How frequently should paediatric cardiopulmonary resuscitation skills be taught?

922 5 minute training sessions can improve Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (CPR) quality

“…Birmingham Children's Hospital has over 60,000 ED attendances per year. 1 During times of high activity and or acuity it can be difficult to ensure that formalised 'shop floor' teaching is occurring within the department. Feedback from Junior Doctor's Forum highlighted a need for in situ shop floor teaching.…”

“…Evidence suggests that this is not sufficient to maintain skill proficiency and that three monthly training could be optimum. 1 More frequent training has to be balanced with clinical commitments. We therefore sought to establish whether brief CPR training sessions with specific trainer and visual feedback could improve CPR quality.…”

A Narrative Review of Training Approaches to Address Low Volume High Risk Pediatric Resuscitation Skills

“…critical appraisal of the body of literature that compared the effect of training frequency on CPR skill performance, authors concluded, "there is insufficient evidence to confirm an optimal training frequency… [however], annual resuscitation training is insufficient to maintain effective CPR skill performance" [6] (p.823). Similarly, Doymaz, et al [8] assessed pediatric residents' retention of knowledge and clinical skills over time following AHA PALS [5] certification.…”

“…Historically, resuscitation training has been offered every 2 years through formats such as the American Heart Association's (AHA) Basic Life Support (BLS) [4] and Pediatric Advanced Life Support (PALS) [5] certifications. However, more recent evidence suggests that one-time or biannual training may not be the optimal training frequency for supporting the ongoing translation of knowledge learned into clinical practice [6,7]. Mulholland and colleagues [6] sought to find evidence in support of their structured clinical question, "Should responders to paediatric arrests (population) receive resuscitation training (intervention) more frequently than national guidelines recommend (comparator) to ensure optimum retention of CPR skills (outcome)" [6] (p. 821).…”