Current knowledge of and willingness to perform Hands-Only CPR in laypersons

Recent simplified guidelines recommend Hands-Only CPR for laypersons and efforts to educate the public of these changes have been made. We determined current knowledge of and willingness to perform Hands-Only CPR.

Design-prospective anonymous survey. Setting-academic suburban emergency department. Subjects-adult patients and visitors in a suburban ED. Survey instrument-33 item closed question format based on prior studies that included baseline demographics and knowledge and experience of CPR. Main outcome-knowledge of and willingness to perform Hands-Only CPR. Data analysis-descriptive statistics. Univariate and multivariate analyses were performed to determine the association between predictor variables and knowledge of and willingness to perform Hands-Only CPR.

We surveyed 532 subjects; mean age was 44±16; 53.2% were female, 75.6% were white. 45.5% were college graduates, and 44.4% had an annual income of greater than $50,000. 41.9% had received prior CPR training; only 10.3% had performed CPR. Of all subjects 124 (23.3%) had knowledge of Hands-Only CPR, yet 414 (77.8%) would be willing to perform Hands-Only CPR on a stranger. Age (P=0.003) and income (P=0.014) predicted knowledge of Hands-Only CPR. A history of a cardiac related event in the family (P=0.003) and previous CPR training (P=0.01) were associated with likelihood to perform Hands-Only CPR.

Less than one fifth of surveyed laypersons knew of Hands-Only CPR yet three quarters would be willing to perform Hands-Only CPR even on a stranger. Efforts to increase layperson education are required to enhance CPR performance.