[A first step to teaching basic life support in schools: Training the teachers].

Introduction: Teachers may have an essential role in basic life support (BLS) training in schoolchildren. However, few data are available about their BLS learning abilities.

Aim: To quantitatively assess the quality of BLS when performed by school teachers after a brief and simple training program.

Materials And Methods: A quasi-experimental study with no control group, and involving primary and secondary education teachers from four privately managed and public funded schools was conducted in 3 stages: 1st. A knowledge test, 2nd: BLS training, and 3rd: Performance test. Training included a 40minutes lecture and 80minutes hands-on session with the help feedback on the quality of the chest compressions.

Results: A total of 81 teachers were included, of which 60.5% were women. After training, the percentage of subjects able to perform the BLS sequence rose from 1.2% to 46% (P<.001). Chest compression quality also improved significantly in terms of: correct hands position (97.6 vs. 72.3%; P<.001), mean depth (48.1 vs. 38.8mm; P<.001), percentage that reached recommended depth (46.5 vs. 21.5%; P<.001), percentage of adequate decompression (78.7 vs. 61.2%; P<.05), and percentage of compressions delivered at recommended rate (64.2 vs. 26.9%; P<.001).

Conclusions: After and brief and simple training program, teachers of privately managed public funded schools were able to perform the BLS sequence and to produce chest compressions with a quality similar to that obtained by staff with a duty to assist cardiac arrest victims. The ability of schoolteachers to deliver good-quality BLS is a pre-requisite to be engaged in BLS training for schoolchildren.