Impact of cardiac life support training on retention of knowledge measured by pretest, immediate posttest, and 6-months posttest

Introduction: Cardiac resuscitation skills are a necessity for newly graduated doctors as they are first responders during a crisis.Despite undergraduate exposure, interns still struggle in an actual crisis.We evaluated final year medical students' long-term retention of knowledge following cardiac life support training prior to exit from medical school to determine the need to revise and re-strategize.Methods: Thirty-seven final year medical students participated in a quasi-experimental research after a cardiac life support (CLS) course where results of their one best answer assessment-pretest, immediate posttest and 6 months posttest were analyzed.Results: A repeated measure ANOVA was conducted on mean test scores of 30-items one best answer (OBA) questions, measured as pre-test, immediate and 6 months posttests after the course.The result showed significant time effect, Wilks Lambda = 0.126, F (2,35) = 121.468,P = <.001.Follow up comparison indicated that each pairwise comparison difference was significant (p ≤ 0. 05).Both immediate and after 6 months post-course test scores were statistically better than the pretest scores suggesting that there was improvement in knowledge after the course despite the decay.Conclusion: Our results showed that retention of knowledge as a short-term memory worked well immediately after the hands-on cardiac resuscitation course.However, though there was improved knowledge even after 6 months compared to before the course, there was decay in knowledge.There is a need to re-strategize to improve knowledge retention.