The effects of different instructional methods on students' acquisition and retention of cardiopulmonary resuscitation skills

Background: The need was evident for the evaluation of applicability and effectiveness of different types of instructional strategies to teach CPR skills. Therefore, the aim of this study was to evaluate the effects of traditional, case-based, and web-based instructional methods on acquisition and retention of CPR skills. Methods: Ninety university students (52 female, 48 male) who selected the first aid course as an elective were assigned randomly to traditional, case-based, and web-based instruction groups. The students were tested three times (pre-test, post-test and retention test) for their measurable and observable CPR skills by using a skill reporter manikin and skill observation checklist. Results: Based on the CPR chest compression performance measurements by the skill reporter manikin, the web-based instruction group performed poorer than the traditional and case-based instruction groups in "average compression rate, percentage of correct chest compressions, the number of too low hand positions, the number of wrong hand positions, the number of incomplete releases, the average number of ventilations, the average volume of ventilations, the minute volume ventilations, the number of too fast ventilations, the total number of ventilations, and the percentage of correct ventilations" (p < .05). Additionally, 18-week time interval negatively affected students' performance on "the percentage of correct chest compressions, and total number of compressions". Similar poor performance by web-based instruction group was also detected by the skill observation checklist. Conclusion: The students in traditional and case-based instruction groups showed better CPR performance than students in web-based instruction group that used video self-instruction as a learning tool. (c) 2009 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.