Quality of clinical care provided during simulated pediatric cardiac arrest: a simulation-based study

We sought to assess compliance to resuscitation guidelines during pediatric simulated cardiac arrests in a pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) and to identify performance gaps to target with future training.

In a prospective observational study in a PICU, ten cardiac arrest scenarios were developed for resuscitation training and video recorded. The video recordings were examined for times to start cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), delivery of first shock, CPR quality (rate, depth), length of pauses, chest compression fraction (CCF), ventilation, pulse/rhythm assessment, compressors' rotation, and leader's behaviours. The primary outcome was percentage of events compliant to Pediatric Advance Life Support guidelines.

Compliance to guidelines was poor in the 23 simulation events studied. The median [interquartile range] time to start CPR was 29 [16-76] sec and 320 [245-421] sec to deliver the first shock. A total of 306 30-sec epochs of CPR were analyzed; excellent CPR (≥ 90% compressions in target for rate and depth) was achieved in 22 (7%) epochs. More than a quarter of the CPR pauses lasted > 10 seconds (33/127, 26%) with just one task performed in most of them; CCF was ≥ 80% in 19/23 (82.6%) events. Ventilation rate for intubated patients was greater than 10 breaths·min^-1 in 15/27 (56%) of one-minute epochs observed.

Review of simulated resuscitation events found suboptimal compliance with resuscitation guidelines, particularly the times to starting CPR and delivering the first shock, as well as compression rate and depth.