Basic Life Support (BLS) and Barriers to Cross-Cultural Education

Correlation of Cognitive and Technical Skills Assessment for Basic Life Support and Identification of Barriers to Cross-Cultural Education

This is a randomized, multi-center intervention trial comparing two educational programs on healthcare provider performance in the Botswana national hospital system. This study addresses the critical question of how to effectively and consistently measure and associate CPR knowledge and psychomotor skills, enabling the optimization of the learners' environment.

Context: The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that more than 16 million people die from cardiovascular diseases each year, accounting for more than one-third of global deaths. Almost half of these deaths take place in hospitalized settings. Standard acute medicine education programs have had limited success in training hospital based healthcare providers to acquire, retain, and transfer knowledge and skills to impact patient outcomes in both developed and developing countries. There is a gap between the cognitive knowledge and critical thinking skills attained during courses and the technical and team skills actually performed by hospital-based healthcare providers. This gap between existing knowledge and performed skills restricts care delivery, underutilizes available resources, and contributes to the number of preventable deaths. This gap is further accentuated in resource limited settings, where barriers to implementation of successful acute medicine training programs are often accentuated.

Primary Objective:

1. To determine selected cognitive knowledge and critical thinking skills which are associated with technical and team skills performance assessed immediately following Basic Life Support (BLS) for Health Care Providers course training.

Secondary Objectives:

1. To identify cultural, healthcare environment and educational barriers that currently impede acquisition, retention, and transfer of knowledge and skills in acute medicine educational programs in resource limited settings.

Inclusion Criteria:

1. Healthcare providers involved in patient contact.
2. Participation in BLS for Healthcare Provider Course

Exclusion Criteria:

1. Have received formal Basic Life Support training in previous 12 months.
2. Inability to perform or complete cognitive and skills assessment testing (pre, immediate post, 3 or six month post).
3. Healthcare personnel performing an educational rotation at the district or referral hospital will not be eligible due to loss of follow-up.