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AHA releases education strategies to improve cardiac arrest survival rates

The American Heart Association said traditional CPR methods are falling short due to a “decay of skills” over time

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The American Heart Association is recommending new CPR education strategies to increase cardiac arrest survival rates.

Photo/Wikimedia Commons

By FireRescue1 Staff

DALLAS — The American Heart Association is recommending new CPR education strategies to increase cardiac arrest survival rates.

According to a recent AHA scientific statement, traditional CPR teaching methods are falling short due to a “decay of skills” over time, resulting in “suboptimal clinical care and poor survival outcomes from cardiac arrest.”

The AHA now recommends contextual learning, shorter, more frequent education sessions, consistent feedback and debriefing, regular assessment and the use of innovative technological platforms to help retain knowledge.

“This focus on education is novel and never before undertaken by the AHA, to look at the literature on education and think about how we can improve and change what we’re doing to ultimately impact patient outcomes,” Alberta Children’s Hospital emergency doctor Adam Cheng said, according to Medscape. “The AHA’s goal is to double survival rates by 2020, and this scientific statement and this process were efforts toward achieving that goal.”

Read the full scientific statement below.

AHA Scientific Statement by Ed Praetorian on Scribd

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