CPR Education before Internship

Background and purpose: The importance of training basic and advanced life support for undergraduates and graduated physicians are now widely recognized. Graduates of medical schools in Iran immediately get license to practice medicine without any supervision. Therefore,Clarification of the best phases for training CPR and the optimum mastery level in each phase is very important. This study is an attempt to find out the ideas of stakeholders about training CPR beforeinternship, the experience needed at the beginning of internship, the best phase for training it and the assessment method.Methods: It is a survey study designed in Isfahan University of Medical Sciences to investigate the opinions of head-nurses, interns, residents and educational directors (in ten clinical departments/wards) about training CPR before internship. Respondents completed self administered anonymous questionnaires. The questionnaires’ items covered opinions of respondents about CPR as interns’ duty, level of experience; best course for training and the assessment method. Meanwhile, views of participants were compared against educational directors’ idea by Fisher exact test.Results:32 head-nurse, 285 interns, 13 resident and15 educational directors participated in the study and all agreed with CPR as interns’ duty in all clinical wards. Although, directors had different idea about level of experience for CPR to be achieved by interns, residents suggested level 3 of experience. According to the results externship is the best phase for CPR training and combination of observation and OSCE suggested as the best assessment method.Conclusion: To prepare the graduates achieving full competency in CPR performance, it is needed to implement training programs before internship. Internship is the best phase for getting expertise in CPR. Based on the results CPR considered as interns’ responsibility and medical schools should feel confidence about the competency ofinterns in CPR at the beginning of internship.