The CPR Continuing Education Programme and Its Goals

Following either in-hospital or out-of-hospital cardiac arrest, irreversible brain damage followed by death will occur if no action is taken within 4–5 minutes [1]. The chances of survival depend on the timely application of the “chain of survival”: this symbolic phrase represents the sequence of four interdependent interventions that maximize the odds of successful resuscitation: early access, early CPR-BLS, early defibrillation, and early advanced cardiac life support [2]. The average 7% survival rate to out-of-hospital cardiac arrests is affected in a stepwise fashion by the availability of each link of the chain of survival: for example, in cases of witnessed out-of-hospital ventricular fibrillation, the provision of BLS only has been reported to result in a 12% survival to discharge, the addition of defibrillation to increase survival to 17% and the further addition of advanced life support to lead to a 29% survival rate [1,2].