Introduction: Cardiac resuscitation skills are a necessity for newly graduated doctors as they are first responders during a crisis. Despite undergraduate exposure, interns still struggle in an actual crisis. We evaluated final year medical students’ long-term retention of knowledge following cardiac life support training prior to exit from medical school to determine the need to revise and re-strategize. Methods: Thirty-seven final year medical students participated in a quasi-experimental research after a cardiac life support (CLS) course where results of their one best answer assessment-pretest, immediate posttest and 6 months posttest were analyzed. Results: A repeated measure ANOVA was conducted on mean test scores of 30-items one best answer (OBA) questions, measured as pre-test, immediate and 6 months posttests after the course. The result showed significant time effect, Wilks Lambda = 0.126, F (2,35) = 121.468, P = <.001. Follow up comparison indicated that each pairwise comparison difference was significant (p ≤ 0. 05). Both immediate and after 6 months post-course test scores were statistically better than the pretest scores suggesting that there was improvement in knowledge after the course despite the decay. Conclusion Our results showed that retention of knowledge as a short-term memory worked well immediately after the hands-on cardiac resuscitation course. However, though there was improved knowledge even after 6 months compared to before the course, there was decay in knowledge. There is a need to re-strategize to improve knowledge retention.
Knowledge ; Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation