Introduction:
The goal of saving more lives relies not only on solid and high-quality science but also the effective education of lay persons and healthcare professionals 1. Training healthcare providers on resuscitation is a constant challenge and we know that there is still a shortage of high quality evidence about the best methods of teaching. Although we know that learners with increased clinical experience have improved performance on skills and knowledge after Advance Life Support (ALS) courses, we still do not know the optimal frequency for refresher training 2.

AIm:
Our objective was to characterize the training state of healthcare professionals in Portugal in terms of resuscitation. 

Method:
We applied an online questionnaire to physicians and nurses from all the country, trying to obtain data such as clinical practice, professional experience, incidence of cardiac arrest (CA) with ALS maneuvers, training in ALS and experience on low dose training in-situ.

Results:
A total of 497 professionals answered, of which 80% are nurses (398) and the remaining 20% are doctors (99), of these 47% work in the context of emergency service and 25% in intensive care units, 30% still work in a pre-hospital medical emergency. It was possible to perceive that almost 46% of respondent’s report having undergone an ALS course in the last 2 years, but more than 30% completed their last one more than 5 years ago. 

Conclusion:
There is still a long way to go in the study of the most effective education implementation, but there seems to be a link between the motivation to perform ALS training and clinical practice.
It was also possible to see that in-situ training is closely linked to the clinical context, since all professionals who reported on-site training on a regular basis are directly linked to the regular care of the critical patient.

4 - Education and implementation of resuscitation – where are we standing in Portugal?