Basic Life Support (BLS) is of vital importance for victims of cardiac and/or respiratory arrest. Survival from cardiac arrest is improved when the time to BLS implementation is short. European Resuscitation Guidelines recommend that all health professionals acquire proficiency in BLS. Although most people can successfully learn CPR, retention of skills is uniformly poor, and begin to deteriorate as early as two weeks after CPR training. The instructor, not the curriculum or the learner, may lie at the heart of poor skill retention. This is especially a problem if the instructor employs non-standard teaching techniques, leaves little time for manikin practice, and fails to promptly correct errors. Allowing adequate practice time on manikins, especially ones with recording capabilities, while giving immediate feedback increases skill retention.
Refresher training should take place as early as 2-4 weeks after the original course, with more extensive retraining after 3-6 months and yearly thereafter.
Keywords: Basic life support, skill retention, training