Assessment of the implementation of step-by-step adult basic life support sequence by emergency medical technicians and drivers during regular annual training

Objective. Evaluation of the efficiency of practicing step-by-step (SBS) BLS/AED (basic life support/automatic external defi-brillator) sequence by emergency medical technicians (EMT) and ambulance drivers (AD) working in medical transport teams. Methods. A prospective two-month study was conducted in which EMTs and ADs working in medical transport teams per-formed their regular 4-hour annual train-ing (1 h of lectures, 1.5 h of practical train-ing and 1.5 h of testing). Each participant performed SBS of BLS/AED sequences in front of a three-member team of instruc-tors. The implementation of BLS/AED se-quence was evaluated by scoring from 0 to 2 (0 – not, 1 – partially, 2 – properly), sepa-rately for EMTs, ADs and in total. The final analysis compared a properly implement-ed SBS sequence (S1-S36) of actions: IA - initial assessment (S1-S10), BLS (S11-S18), AED (S19-S25), RP - recovery position (S26-S32) and FBAO - foreign body airway obstruction (S33-S36) for use by the BLS/AED between EMTs and ADs. The crite-rion for a completed regular training was at least 47 (65.0%) of the total number of points won for properly implemented pro-cedures.

Results. The study involved 31 EMTs and 63 Ads, regardless of gender and average age, with EMTs having slightly longer work experience (p>0.05). The results of our study show that EMTs are more skilled at IA, cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and AED, whereas ADs were better at im-plementing RP and performing the Heim-lich maneuver (p<0.001).

Conclusion. Although EMTs and ADs implement SBS BLS/AED procedures correctly and satisfactorily in more than 65.0%, future research should focus on finding more efficient, shorter and cheaper BLS/AED trainings.

basic life support, step-by-step, sequence, emergency medical technicians, ambulance drivers

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