Airway Obstruction During BLS

Appropriate management of cardiac arrest (immediately and technically well performed) is a priority that must be taught to all citizens and future healthcare personnel, including future physicians. In this medical school, 2nd year medical students receive a 8 hour training session on basic life support (BLS) and management of cardiac arrest is taught into 5 successive parts, with learning and cumulative repetition of the steps: detection of unconsciousness, call for help, absence of breathing, cardiac massage and defibrillation.

During the many sessions previously carried out by our team, it often appeared that students, when evaluating breathing forget the 1st part related to airway and breathing, i.e. relieving airway obstruction. Yet it has been shown that opening the airway and early removal of a foreign body are associated with improved neurological survival. Importantly, mouth-to-mouth is not included in the learning session and compression-only is advocated.

The purpose of the present study is to evaluate if the use of an observation tool, with items centered on airway obstruction, can improve learning of this step, as shown in some previous trials.

This will be a trial performed in medical students in which training days will be randomized to include or not the use of an observation tool modified to emphasize the procedural parts that are aimed at relieving airway obstruction.

At the end of each day, students will be video-recorded while playing a short BLS scenario and airway obstruction-relieving skills will be compared.