Knowing CPR vs. Performing High-quality CPR: Two-year Training is Not Optimal

CPR saves lives, but poor CPR performance is devastating to patient outcomes. Last month, resuscitation science and technology leaders, American Heart Association and Laerdal Medical, called for a paradigm shift to CPR competency to save 50,000 additional lives from preventable cardiac arrest each year by 2025.

“I'm not sure about you, but I find it hard to think about almost anything in life where you can achieve mastery learning by doing something once every two years… two-year training is not optimal." – Brian Eigel, PhD

For decades, the CPR training standard for healthcare providers has been Basic Life Support with a requirement for participants to renew their course completion card every two years. However, studies show CPR skills can decay within three to six months following this training.

If you have a  Basic Life Support card (or ACLS or PALS card), are you good at CPR? I'm sure you think you perform CPR well and hope you do! Your BLS card simply shows you know how to do CPR, yet there is no way to know if you can perform the high-quality CPR that is necessary to save a cardiac arrest victim’s life. In an emergency, it is not enough to know CPR; healthcare professionals need to perform high-quality CPR on every patient, every time.  

Each year, more than 200,000 adult cardiac arrests occur in U.S. hospitals and less than 26 percent of adult patients survive. The primary factor that influences survival from cardiac arrest is high-quality CPR.

The American Heart Association (Association) and Laerdal Medical (Laerdal) hosted the inaugural RQI® 2020 Keynote and Healthcare Networking Conference in Dallas on July 26 and called for a shift to verified CPR competency for healthcare professionals. Leaders from many of the nation’s largest healthcare systems learned how the Association and Laerdal are furthering their decades-long alliance to deliver a new standard of resuscitation quality and patient-centered care anchored in simulation-based mastery learning.

During the Keynote presentation, speakers from the Association and Laerdal addressed today’s reality regarding the in-hospital CPR competency gap and a focus on a new, higher standard of resuscitation care to improve patient outcomes. In this video excerpt, I explain how science and studies clearly show that status quo resuscitation training is not optimal to impact in-hospital cardiac arrest survival. Change is needed – poor-quality CPR is a preventable harm.

To meet this challenge, in 2015, the Association and Laerdal co-developed RQI, or Resuscitation Quality Improvement®. RQI is a self-directed, simulation-based performance and quality improvement program for healthcare professionals that offers “low-dose, high-frequency” hands-on learning sessions that provide vital CPR skills practice in 10 minutes every 90 days. RQI offers a comprehensive, end-to-end quality improvement program at a lower cost to healthcare organizations and professionals.

The RQI program revolves around mastery learning and verified competence. The Association published an Education Statement in late June that stated mastery learning is the key to skill retention and prevention of CPR skills decay.

Here’s what we know: CPR saves lives, but poor CPR performance is devastating to patient outcomes. Imagine a world where healthcare professionals consistently perform high-quality CPR? We can dramatically increase in-hospital cardiac arrest survival rates and save even more lives.

There is a better way. We now know that high-quality CPR performance is the most critical component of cardiac arrest survival. With the recent convergence of technology, science and educational research, it is no longer enough for healthcare professionals to be trained in CPR once every two years. They must take regular sessions of “perfect practice” every three to six months to ensure skills mastery through effective measurement and feedback so they are prepared to reliably deliver high-quality CPR to every patient, every time.

”Every patient deserves a highly proficient system and highly proficient provider taking care of them. This is an opportunity to challenge all of us to now take a stand and create the will for a new standard that is based on performance, not simply knowledge.” – Brian Eigel, PhD

To learn more about RQI, visit www.rqipartners.com, heart.org or laerdal.com.

Brian Eigel, PhD is chief operating officer of RQI Partners, LLC, a joint venture partnership between the American Heart Association and Laerdal Medical. Prior to joining RQI Partners, Dr. Eigel served as senior vice president of Emergency Cardiovascular Care at the American Heart Association.