Knowledge Regarding Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation of Pregnant Women among Iranian Medical Sciences` Students during Internship: A Cross- sectional study

Background: Cardiac arrest is a rare condition in pregnancy.Lack of knowledge is one of the predictor factors for poor outcomes following resuscitation.In addition, there are no data that address the knowledge of medical sciences` students regarding CPR in this special circumstance which may affect their future clinical practice.Aims and objectives: the aim of the study was to determine knowledge regarding cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) of pregnant women among Iranian medical sciences` students during internship.Study Design: This was a cross sectional study.Setting: This study was conducted at hospitals affiliated with Tehran University of Medical Sciences (TUMS, Tehran, Iran).Materials and Methods: 350 medical sciences` students of both sexes, during the internship, and with tendency to participate in the study recruited between January and May 2018 with consecutive sampling.The eleven questionquestionnaire evaluated four areas of knowledge as follows: (1) the need for left uterine displacement (LUD); (2) current advanced cardiac life support (ACLS); physiologic changes during pregnancy (PHYS); and recommendation to preform cesarean delivery for pregnant women (> 20 gestation`s week) after 4 to 5 minutes of unsuccessful resuscitation following cardiac arrest (5CD).A score of 100 % was considered as perfect score.Statistics: Descriptive statistics and statistical test were used to describe and analyze data with SPSS software version 16.Data presented as mean (SD) in percentage.A P-value less than 0.05 was considered as statistically significant.Results: At the end of the study, 304/350 medical sciences` students (40.8 % medicine, and 59.2% non-medicine) with mean age of 23.98 (2.01) completed the study.Knowledge score for four areas of LUD, ACLS, PHYS, and 5CD were 24.34 (25.68), 32.56 (33.87), 36.51 (26.96), 18.75 (28.32) percentage, respectively.In addition, medical students had significantly higher knowledge regarding LUD (P<0.0001), and 5CD (P=0.001) compared with non-medical students.While, knowledge regarding ACLS among non-medical students was higher than medical students (P<0.0001).In contrast, there was no significant difference between the two groups on knowledge regarding PHYS (P=0.143).Conclusion: Knowledge regarding CPR of pregnant women was inadequate among Iranian medical sciences` students during internship in TUMS.Thus, there is need to be improved by ACLS training, especially for pregnant women.