ABSTRACT
Background: Basic life support skills are important in emergency health care services. The knowledge as well as level of practice of resuscitation procedures and techniques among clinical undergraduate students in Nigeria is relatively low as observed and reported from a few noted studies.
Aim:The aim of this study was to assess the knowledge, attitude and practice of cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) among clinical undergraduate students in selected medical colleges in Southern Nigerian universities
Methods:The Slovin formulae was used to calculate a sample size of 978 participants. A questionnaire was used to collect data on the sociodemographic data, knowledge, attitude and practice of cardiopulmonary resuscitation amongst the participants, however only 432 questionnaires were completed and valid for analysis. Data obtained was analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. SPSS version 21 was used for analysis. Level of significance was set at p=0.05
Results: The results of this study showed that majority of the student (94.2%) were aged 18-27 years, 39.4% pf participants were medical students of the total participants and majority (49.8%) were the 500 level students. 96.3% of the participants had good knowledge of CPR, and 70.4% had positive attitude towards cardiopulmonary resuscitation, while, 86.1% had not previously practiced CPR. There were no significant association between knowledge and any sociodemographic characteristics (p>0.05), also there were no significant association between attitude and the socio demographics (p>0.05). However, there were significant association between practice of CPR and department (x2=18.885, P=0.0001), gender (x2=7.548, P = 0.006), and study level (x2=22.985, p=0.0001).
Conclusion and Recommendation: The knowledge across all universities was good and the students had an overall positive attitude towards cardiopulmonary resuscitation but the level of practice was low amongst all students. There is a need to have regular CPR training and assessment since prior CPR exposure results in knowledge retention. With this a curriculum review of practical skills for cardiopulmonary resuscitation for clinical undergraduate studies is recommended.
Keywords: Knowledge, attitude, practice, cardiopulmonary resuscitation, cardiac arrest.
