Providing Education to Improve Cardiac Arrest Response Knowledge and Comfortability of Staff

Abstract

Purpose: This project pursues the questioning and evaluation of current Advanced Cardiac LifeSupport (ACLS)-type education methods and their effect on knowledge and comfort levels in new graduate nurses (NGNs) within the intensive care unit (ICU) setting. Background: The background demonstrates an emphasis on ACLS-type education that focuses on repetitive and hands on learning to improve both knowledge level and comfort for staff providing the resuscitation efforts. Methods: As mentioned previously, the existing literature exemplifies the use of hands on and repetitive learning to solidify the knowledge necessary to provide successful resuscitation. This project will thereby utilize these methods to educate all nursing staff, including NGNs within a specific ICU where knowledge will be evaluated with the use of pre and post education examination surveys. Results: The data supported the overall benefits of in-person and hands-on educational training for ACLS type education for ICU nursing staff to improve both knowledge and comfort levels. Conclusions: There was a substantial amount of statistical significance within the data results. A small amount of the results was deemed statistically insignificant which may be attributed to the reduced sample size for the quality improvement project. Because of this statistical analysis, further research is recommended with an expanded sample size to improve significance and overall generalizability of the quality improvement implementation plan.