Family Presence at First Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation and Subsequent Limitations on Care in the Medical Intensive Care Unit.

Background: The association of family-witnessed cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and subsequent advance directives in the medical intensive care unit is unknown.

Objective: To compare clinical outcomes, including subsequent limitations on care, of family-witnessed vs family-unwitnessed CPR in the inpatient setting.

Methods: Analysis of demographics and outcomes pertaining to family presence in a retrospective cohort of consecutive patients receiving first CPR in the medical intensive care unit of a tertiary academic medical center.

Validation of a detailed scoring checklist for use during advanced cardiac life support certification.

Introduction: Defining valid, reliable, defensible, and generalizable standards for the evaluation of learner performance is a key issue in assessing both baseline competence and mastery in medical education. However, before setting these standards of performance, the reliability of the scores yielding from a grading tool must be assessed. Accordingly, the purpose of this study was to assess the reliability of scores generated from a set of grading checklists used by nonexpert raters during simulations of American Heart Association (AHA) Megacodes.