Effectiveness of Basic Life Support Training Among School and College Students: An Interventional Study

Background: Sudden cardiac arrest remains a leading cause of preventable death worldwide, and survival depends critically on the speed and quality of bystander basic life support (BLS) before emergency medical services arrive. While BLS training has been extensively studied among healthcare students, evidence on its effectiveness among non-health-science students across different educational levels remains limited. This study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of structured BLS training on the knowledge and attitude of higher secondary, undergraduate, and postgraduate students. Material and Methods: This interventional study was conducted among 314 students from one higher secondary school and two colleges in Kerala, India, following Institutional Ethics Committee approval. Participation was voluntary. A structured questionnaire and the American Heart Association adult CPR and AED skills checklist were administered before and immediately after a three-hour hands-on BLS training session, along with a feedback survey. The Wilcoxon signed-rank test was used for pre-post comparisons and the Kruskal-Wallis test with Tukey post-hoc analysis for between-group comparisons, given the non-normal distribution of scores. Results: Knowledge and attitude scores improved significantly after training across all three educational groups (p<0.0001 for knowledge; p<0.05 for attitude in each group). The increase in attitude score was significantly greater among undergraduates than higher secondary (p<0.0001) or postgraduate (p=0.011) students, while the knowledge gain differed significantly only between undergraduate and postgraduate groups (p=0.018). Over 95% of participants across all groups rated the training favorably and supported its inclusion in the academic curriculum. Conclusion: Structured BLS training significantly improves knowledge and attitude toward cardiopulmonary resuscitation among students regardless of educational background, supporting its incorporation into school and college curricula.

Keywords: Basic life support; cardiopulmonary resuscitation; students; health education; emergency training.