The 10 Commandments of Resuscitation

Abstract

Cardiopulmonary cerebral resuscitation is a part of the theoretical and practical activities that must be mastered by health professionals who care for patients with haemodynamic compromise or cardiac arrest. Since Peter Safar, the father of western reanimatology, introduced the ABC-DEF-GHI mnemonic to help rescuers remember the steps of basic and advanced life support and postarrest management in a rapid, effective, and safe way, various mnemonic resources have been utilised to encode this knowledge in the long-term memory and help with fast retrieval. The purpose of this reflection article, based on different resuscitation workshops that have been carried out since 2000 at Colombian Society of Anaesthesiology and Resuscitation (S.C.A.R.E) and Universidad Nacional de Colombia., is to share a simple and practical set of 10 rules that must be followed in order to achieve successful resuscitation.