Teaching cards as low-cost and brief materials for teaching basic life support to 6–10-year-old primary school children – a quasi-experimental combination design study

AIM: Teaching Basic Life Support (BLS) in schools is a key initiative to improve the survival rates after out-of-hospital cardiac arrest. Low-cost training materials can reach a wider population. Our aim was to compare the effectiveness of using teaching cards with the traditional instructor-led and combined methods on BLS skills and attitude and to evaluate the long-term effects after two months. METHODS: A quasi-experimental combination design study. Two hundred sixty-three schoolchildren aged 6 to 10 years were assigned to three groups with different methods to teach BLS: teaching card group (n = 100), traditional instructor-led teaching group (n = 91), combined teaching group (n = 72). BLS skills and attitude were measured and compared before the training (T0), after the training (T1), and two months later (T2). RESULTS: BLS skills improved in every group at T1 compared to T0 (p < 0.001) and remained higher at T2 than at T0 in almost all cases (p < 0.001). Skill performance was similar in most of the skills between the three groups at T1. The best skill scores acquired were calling the ambulance and the correct hand position by chest compression. Positioning the head during check the breathing was more effective in the traditional group (48.4%) and combined group (61.1%) than in the teaching card group (19.0%) (p < 0.001) at T1. However, some skills improved significantly in the teaching card group at T2: check breathing for 10 s (p = 0.016); positioning the head by check breathing (p < 0.001); and positioning the head by ventilation (p = 0.011). Attitude did not change significantly in any of the groups (p > 0.05). Furthermore, the level of attitude was inferior in the teaching card group compared with the traditional (p = 0.005), and the combined groups (p = 0.049). CONCLUSION: Using low-cost materials for teaching BLS for young schoolchildren can improve their skills, however, could not improve attitudes. Teaching cards were not inferior compared to traditional and combined methods in some skills but inferior in others. Therefore, hands-on training opportunity is still important. Teaching cards are useful for long-term learning. To learn correctly the whole sequence of BLS is difficult for 6 to 10 years-old children, however, they are able to learn more BLS-related skills separately.