Teaching Medical Students Neonatal Resuscitation: Knowledge Gained and Retained from a Brief Simulation-based Training Workshop

CONTEXT: Despite being an essential clinical skill, many junior doctors feel unprepared to perform neonatal resuscitation. We introduced a neonatal resuscitation training workshop in 2009 for our final-year medical students. OBJECTIVES: We assessed the effectiveness of our workshop in improving knowledge immediately post-training and at the end of the year. METHODS: We retrospectively analysed the data of our students who attended the workshops during their Paediatric posting in small groups. The workshop was adapted from the American Academy of Paediatrics (AAP) Neonatal Resuscitation Provider (NRP) programme, and included overview lectures, practical simulation, interactive video scenarios and assessments (pre- and post-tests), which comprised 21 multiple-choice questions covering evaluation, practical actions and theory. We repeated the assessment in the final week of the students' medical training ("final test"). We analysed the data using paired t-test, analysis of variance (ANOVA), linear regression and Friedman's test. FINDINGS: All 56 students attended the workshops. Their mean scores (out of 21) were 11.7 (SD 2.5) (pre-test), 16.2 (SD 1.9) (post-test) and 13.6 (SD 2.3) (final test) (P ≤ 0.001 for all pair-wise comparisons). The workshop's timing (earlier or later in the year) had no relationship with the students' final test scores (P = 0.96). In the final test, 68.5%, 67.4% and 60.6% on average answered correctly questions on practical action, theory and evaluation, respectively (P = 0.03). DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS: Our workshop produced a modest gain in student knowledge on neonatal resuscitation at the end of their medical course. The students' overall gain in knowledge was below our expectation, and evaluation appeared to be their weakest domain. Further research should evaluate strategies to enhance longer-term knowledge retention with practical performance.