Evaluation of nurses' competence in cardiopulmonary resuscitation at Al-Diwaniyah Teaching Hospital

Abstract

Background: Cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) is an urgent, real life intervention meant to keep cerebral circulation and other vital organs working, by combining chest compressions plus artificial ventilation during a cardiac arrest situation. Having solid nursing knowledge of CPR pathways is basically important for survival results, especially in acute care areas. Objective: The goal was to look at how well nurses know about cardiac arrest and cardiopulmonary resuscitation, across multiple critical care units in a teaching hospital in Iraq. Methods: This was a hospital based observational cross sectional study, carried out at Al-Diwaniyah Teaching Hospital, Iraq, from October 15 2023 to March 30 2024. The study used non probability sampling, and 50 nurses were chosen from cardiac care, intensive care, emergency, and pulmonary resuscitation units. Data collection happened through structured questionnaires, and they were interviewer administered, the questionnaire itself was made for this particular study. The tool had two parts: one demographic section with 7 items, and a knowledge section with 25 items. For content checking, validity was confirmed after expert opinion, via a group of 10 specialists who reviewed the instrument. Results: Most of the nurses who took part showed poor understanding in how to recognize cardiac arrest and how to perform CPR correctly. These knowledge gaps were not significantly linked with gender, age, years of clinical experience, the unit where they worked, prior training, or even how confident they rated their resuscitation skills. That said, there was a statistically noticeable relationship between the level of knowledge, and nurses academic qualification. Conclusions: CPR knowledge gaps are pretty prevalent among nurses working in critical care units at Al-Diwaniyah Teaching Hospital, and from the data it looks like academic qualification is the lone significant demographic predictor. Overall these results point toward systemic deficiencies in CPR preparedness among frontline nursing staff, like it’s not just individual, it’s more built into the system sort of thing.