The impact of basic life support training on the knowledge and skills amongst medical students in faculty of medicine, Universitas Malikussaleh: a pre-experimental study

Introduction: Basic life Support (BLS) is a series of initial attempts to restore respiratory and/or circulatory functions in a person whose breathing and/or circulation stopped (cardiac or respiratory arrest). This study aimed to determine the impact of Basic Life Support (BLS) Training on the knowledge and skills amongst medical students of the Faculty of Medicine, Universitas Malikussaleh. Methods: An institution-based pre-experimental study with no control of extraneous variables in the form of a one-group pre-test-post-test design. Three steps of the study, administering a pre-test measuring the dependent variables, applying the training to the respondents, and administering a post-test. The differences attributed to the application of the BLS training were then evaluated by comparing the pre-test and post-test scores using the Wilcoxon test, and the differences were considered significant at p<0.05. Results: A total of 82 medical students were involved in this study. The overall knowledge of BLS before the training was categorized as good, adequate, and poor with 1 (1.2%), 57 (69.5%) and 24 (29.3%), respectively. While the level of BLS skills of all respondents, 82 (100%), was poor. However, the level of knowledge and skills amongst respondents after participating in BLS training categorized as adequate increased significantly to 77 (93.9%) and 48 (58.5%), respectively, and none of the respondents categorized as a poor level of knowledge even though there were 34 (41.5%) respondents still had poor level of skills. Bivariate statistical analysis using the Wilcoxon test found that the BLS training impacts knowledge and skills with a p-value of 0.000 (p< 0.05). Conclusion: This study showed that the implementation of BLS training for medical students greatly impacts knowledge and skills. The routine non-academic BLS training should be considered to increase both knowledge and skills amongst medical students.