Awareness and Attitude Towards Basic Life Support Among Undergraduate Medical Students of Private Medical Colleges in Malaysia
[1]
Lim Shin Tyan, Faculty of Medicine, Melaka Manipal Medical College (Manipal Academy of Higher Education), Muar, Malaysia.
[2]
Shashinka Nelson, Faculty of Medicine, Melaka Manipal Medical College (Manipal Academy of Higher Education), Muar, Malaysia.
[3]
Sim Jiun Chen, Faculty of Medicine, Melaka Manipal Medical College (Manipal Academy of Higher Education), Muar, Malaysia.
[4]
Siti Nurazera Binti Kamaludin, Faculty of Medicine, Melaka Manipal Medical College (Manipal Academy of Higher Education), Muar, Malaysia.
[5]
Ammar Bin Amran, Faculty of Medicine, Melaka Manipal Medical College (Manipal Academy of Higher Education), Muar, Malaysia.
A solid knowledge regarding BLS and CPR should be cultivated within individuals especially healthcare professionals so that they can engage in life saving measures in case of an emergency. Our study aims to determine the awareness as well the attitude towards basic life support among undergraduate medical students of private medical colleges in Malaysia. A cross sectional analytical study was conducted among 138 undergraduate medical students in a private medical college in Malaysia from May 2019 to June 2019. A self-administered, structured questionnaire which was obtained from previous studies was used to collect data. The awareness questionnaire consisted of 20 multiple choice questions while the questionnaire which assessed attitude consisted of 15 Likert type scale based questions. In the assessment of awareness, 1.45% of medical students seemed to have a good awareness while 27.54% had a somewhat fair awareness towards BLS and 71.04% of them seemed to have a poor awareness on BLS. In the assessment of attitude, 7.25% of medical students seemed to have a good attitude while 63.77% of students had a somewhat fair attitude towards BLS and 28.99% of them seemed to have a poor attitude towards BLS. There is no significant association between gender (p value=0.604), ethnicity (p value=0.365), parents’ occupation (related or not related to medical field) (p value=0.469), semester (p value=0.061) in both cases of awareness and attitude (P value <0.05). However, there is significant difference of awareness and attitude towards BLS between those who had experience in giving CPR and those who did not have experience in giving CPR. (P value>0.05). In conclusion, it was revealed that undergraduate medical students had suboptimal awareness on Basic Life Support. However, they seemed to cultivate a rather positive attitude towards the same. We recommend that early introduction of BLS training and regular reinforcement training to medical students is needed to improve students’ awareness towards BLS.
BLS/CPR, Awareness and Attitude, Experience, Questionnaire, Undergraduate Medical Students, Malaysia
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