CPR IN MEDICAL RESIDENTS
ANCHOR LEAD: MANY MEDICAL RESIDENTS MAY NOT BE PRACTICING GOOD CPR, AND A JOHNS HOPKINS STUDY MAY HAVE FOUND OUT WHY. ELIZABETH TRACEY REPORTS
Who should be better equipped to perform CPR correctly than a medical resident? Yet a Johns Hopkins study has shown that a very high percentage of residents in pediatrics aren’t performing the technique according to American Heart Association guidelines. Elizabeth Hunt, one of the study’s authors, says the study helped to identify an important cause.
HUNT: What we started to understand was that they were forgetting the basics, and so for instance they would see that the child wasn’t breathing, and they would know that they needed to assist the breathing, because pediatricians are taught airway, airway, airway, and then they would realize that there was no pulse, and they would say to themselves okay, get me the defibrillator, instead of, there’s no pulse, start compressions. So we finally realized that they’re jumping into the advanced life support and they’re forgetting the basics. :28Hunt says one solution is to make residents aware that they’re going right to technology when it’s available. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.
