Student led outreach workshops to promote basic life support

Objectives: To provide basic life support training to the staff, students and faculty of higher educational institutions in urban areas through pre-trained medical students, and to record the qualitative impact of community training on student facilitators. Methods: The mixed-method quasi-experimental study was conducted at the Foundation University, Islamabad, Pakistan, in collaboration with the Higher Education Commission of Pakistan from 2015 to 2018. Trained volunteer medical students were divided into teams to visit and provide hands-on basic life support training to 15 educational institutions in Rawalpindi and Islamabad with each batch having 45-50 participants. The participants completed pre-and post-training questionnaires, whereas the trainers went through post-training, semi-structured interviews. Quantitative analysis of pre and post-training responses was done using SPSS 21. Qualitative assessment of the impact of learning experience was done through constant comparative analysis of transcripts. Results: There were 120 volunteers and 675 participants subjects. The participants' knowledge about basic life support showed significant improvement (p<0.001) post-training. There were two main recurring themes identified in the interviews; an opportunity to improve self-confidence, and technical skill. Conclusion: Hands-on training sessions conducted by pre-trained medical students not only resulted in an improvement in Basic Life Support knowledge of the participants, but also had a substantial impact on student trainers' self-confidence and technical skills.