Football referees as first responders in cardiac arrest. Assessment of a Basic Life Support training program

pulmonary resuscitation (CPR) skills and automated external defibrillator (AED) use in a simulated sport incident scenario, after a brief training program.

Material and Methods. Quasi-experimen-tal study with 35 amateur league football referees. A test – retest of related samples was carried out after the training program. Theoretical and hands-on session lasted 30 minutes, with 1/10 instructor/partici-pant ratio. CPR skills were measured using Wireless Skill Report software and AED use by means of a specific check list. Results. A third of sample knew what an AED is but only 8% knew how to use it. Af-ter training, all participants achieved 70% or higher CPR quality scores and were able to use AED properly (54.2% without any incidence). Mean time to discharge was shorter for participants who accomplished the quality goal (p=0.022).

Conclusions. After a very brief and simple training program, football referees were able to perform a potentially effective CPR and use an AED correctly in a simulated scenario. Basic life support training should be implemented in football referees´ form-ative curriculum.

automated external defibrillator, referees, cardiac arrest, cardiopulmonary resuscitation, basic life support, training, sport, football

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