Cues to action for basic life support among teachers in Ibadan: A descriptive cross-sectional study

Abstract

Medical emergencies such as Out of Hospital Cardiac Arrest (OHCA) may occur anytime, anywhere and to anyone including students in  schools. Teachers are the first bystanders to take initiative at resuscitation of learners while in the school environment. Outcomes of  OHCA are better when the bystander adequately recognize and optimize cues to action for BLS, especially Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation  (CPR). Hence, the present study was set out to assess cues to action for BLS among teachers in Ibadan, Oyo state, Nigeria.  Descriptive cross-sectional design was used. Multi-stage sampling was adopted in selecting 440 teachers out of 1586 who were given  semi-structured questionnaire for their responses. For cues to action for Basic Life Support, items were scored. Score ≤60% was  categorized as insufficient cues to action while score >60% was considered sufficient cues to action for BLS. Most of the teachers were  from secondary schools (65.9%) who were female (70.0%) and were aged above 40 years (69.1%) as mean age ± SD was 45.1±10.2 years.  Overall, teachers had insufficient cues to action (Mean score 49.3%) as only 123 (28.1%) of them reported sufficient cues to action for  providing BLS. Less than one-third of teachers reported having sufficient cues to action for BLS. To ensure optimal cues to action for BLS  as an important public health practice, improvement in all the types of cues, especially environmental, social and cognitive cues should be  prioritized.