Factors affecting knowledge and attitude of healthcare workers towards basic life support in Khyber Teaching Hospital, Peshawar, Pakistan: a cross-sectional analysis

OBJECTIVE: This study was conducted to assess the knowledge and attitude of healthcare workers towards basic life support (BLS) in Khyber Teaching Hospital, Peshawar, and to investigate the factors affecting them. DESIGN: Cross-sectional study. SETTING: This study was carried out in a tertiary care hospital in Peshawar, Pakistan. PARTICIPANTS: 201 healthcare professionals were recruited for this study through simple convenience sampling which included house officers (HOs), trained medical officers, postgraduate residents, professors, specialty registrars and nurses. Healthcare professionals who were reluctant to give consent were excluded from the study. RESULTS: Among the chosen participants, only 16.4% had good knowledge whereas 63% had a good attitude towards BLS. Knowledge of participants was found to be positively associated with less time elapsed between the training sessions (p=0.041). On the other hand, factors such as age(p=0.004), designation (p=0.05), number of BLS sessions attended (p=0.012) and the time elapsed since the last BLS session attended (p=0.015), were positively associated with the attitude of healthcare professionals. CONCLUSION: The level of knowledge and attitude towards BLS by healthcare professionals was suboptimal. Those individuals who had attended BLS training sessions frequently had better knowledge and attitude as compared with their counterparts.