Purpose of the study: Nurses and physicians are the first who respond to in-hospital cardiac arrest by applying standardized cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR). The purpose of this questionnaire study was to assess the knowledge of health care professionals on CPR and compare achieved scores between the different specialties, departments and CPR-education. 

Materials and methods: The study was performed at university hospitals in 12 European countries where cardiology, anesthesiology, and intensive care medicine health care professionals completed a questionnaire within 20 minutes. The questionnaire covered epidemiology (12 questions), CPR knowledge about Basic Life Support (10 multiple choice questions), ischemic stroke (3 questions), and Advanced Life Support (13 multiple choice questions). Non parametric Kruskal Wallis test analyzed differences. Values are expressed as median (interquartile range). A p<0.05 was considered as significant.

Results: We were able to analyze 551 questionnaires from health care professionals (220 from specialized physicians, 99 from residents, 232 from nurses) and found differences between specialties, departments and CPR-education. Specialized physicians scored highest on BLS with 8/10 (7-8) correct answers, ALS with 10/13 (8-11) correct answers, and total score with 19/26 (17-21) correct answers (p<0.0001) in comparison with residents and nurses. 
Participants (both physicians and nurses) from anesthesiology departments scored highest on total score with 19/26 (16-20, p=0.034) correct answers compared with those from cardiology departments and ICUs. Health care professionals who had participated in at least one CPR-course scored higher on ALS-knowledge with 9/13 (8-11, p=0.002) correct answers and total score with 18/26 (16-20, p=0.038) correct answers than those who had never participated in a CPR course before.

Conclusion: These results demonstrate the importance of CPR-education. The differences between specialties and departments should guide specific CPR-programs for the different health care providers. Whether these programs lead to better patients’ survival needs to be assessed in the future.

4 - “Comparing health care professionals’ CPR-knowledge between different specialties, departments and educational training in Europe”