Evaluation of the level of knowledge of Van Y.Y.U. Faculty of Medicine intern and assistant physicians and family physicians working in Van province on basic life support and advanced cardiac life support

Introduction and Aim: Physicians, who are at the most important stage of public health, should have complete knowledge and skills on basic life support and advanced cardiac life support, which are vital for humanity, regardless of their branch, and physicians should be able to provide effective basic life support and advanced cardiac life support to patients. In this study, intern and assistant physicians working at Van Yüzüncü Yıl University Dursun Odabaş Medical Center and family physicians working in primary care in Van province, with multiple-choice questionnaire questions prepared on the basis of the most up-to-date guidelines published by the American Heart Association (AHA) and the European Resuscitation Council (ERC), on basic life support and advanced cardiac life support, The level of knowledge, the adequacy and up-to-dateness of their knowledge, and the rate of following current guidelines were investigated. Materials and Methods: Our study is a cross-sectional, descriptive study.The research was conducted between 01.09.2023 and 01.12.2023 to intern and assistant physicians working at Van YYU Faculty of Medicine Dursun Odabaş Medical Center and family physicians working in primary care in Van province.It was applied to a total of 266 physicians, including 139 assistant physicians, 60 intern physicians, and 67 family physicians. The data were obtained with the consent of the physicians, with socio-demographic data, with a questionnaire form consisting of a total of 35 questions, including 15 questions and 10 basic life support information questions, 10 advanced cardiac life support information questions, questioning the training of the participants on CPR and whether they consider themselves competent in this regard. The knowledge questions consisted of five options and the correct answer to each question was calculated as 1 point. Basic life support questions were calculated over 10 points, and advanced cardiac life support questions were calculated over 10 points. Analyses SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Sciences; SPSS Inc., Chicago, IL) was evaluated in 22 package programs. In the analyzes, the statistical significance level was accepted as p<0.05 Results: A total of 266 physicians, 92 female (34.6%) and 174 (65.4%) male, were included in the study.Of the 266 physicians, 40 (15%) were in emergency, anesthesia, cardiology departments, 61 (22.9%) were in internal sciences, 38 (14.3%) were in surgical sciences, 60 (22.6%) were interns and 67 (25.2%) were family physicians. When the total scores of the physicians from the BLS and ACLS questions were examined, the average total score of BLS was 5.1±1.8, while the average total score of BLS was 5.6±2.1. When the BLS and ACLS scores were evaluated in terms of the department, emergency medicine, anesthesia and reanimation and cardiology assistants received more points than other physicians.(p=0.008, p<0.001).The level of knowledge of physicians who are more likely to encounter a cardiopulmonary arrest patient and who have active BLS and ACLS training in their education is higher (p<0.001), those who follow the CPR guide (p<0.001), those who intervened in the patient who needed CPR before (p=0.028), those who found themselves competent in BLS and ACLS (p=0.009), those who received BLS and ACLS training in the last 3 years or before (p=0.018) and those who are not afraid of harming the patient while performing CPR (p=0.001), We found it significantly higher. In addition, 57.5% of the physicians stated that they did not follow the CPR guideline, 51.5% of them were afraid of harming the patient while performing CPR (this rate was found to be 63.3% in intern physicians), 22.2% of them attended a course or congress on BLS and ACLS, and 94.4% of them stated that they should be re-trained about BLS and ACLS after graduation. Conclusion: The results obtained from our study showed us that in order to increase the level of knowledge and up-to-dateness of physicians, all physicians, regardless of their branch, should be given BLS and ACLS training theoretically and practically by the relevant units after graduation and should be repeated at short intervals. In addition, intern physicians should be actively involved in the treatment of cardiopulmonary arrest patients.