KNOWLEDGE OF HEALTH SCIENCES UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS IN OBJECTIVE TESTS ON BASIC LIFE SUPPORT

Sudden Cardiac Arrest (SCA) is a serious public health problem and represents one of the leading causes of death in the world. In emergency situations the assessment of the victim and care must be effective, to reduce negative outcomes and to increase the survival rate. Objective: To analyze graduation students in the Health Sciences through objective testing on Basic Life Support (BLS). Methods: This is a descriptive, observational and cross sectional study, performed in the State of Sao Paulo, Brazil. The study population consisted of 664 graduation students in Medicine, Nursing, Physiotherapy, Pharmacy, Nutrition and Occupational Therapy. Data collection occurred through an instrument in the form of objective tests based on the guidelines for Basic Life Support from the American Heart Association. For analysis the Shapiro-Wilk, Chi-square, Mann-Whitney and Kruskal-Wallis tests were used. The adopted confidence level was 95%. The statistical program used was Stata 11.0. Result: There was found to be a prevalence of students who were female (82.23%), single (77.56%), on the physiotherapy course (53.16%), in the freshmen year (32.2%) with previous training (54.45%) and with a median age of 22 years old. When the association between the scores was analyzed according to sex, marital status, previous training, course and year of study, the relation between the number of correct answers and previous training, course and year of study showed statistically significant differences (p < 0.001). Conclusion: 99.9% of subjects had lower score than the minimum score of 84% of Americam Heart Association, which characterizes insufficient knowledge about the basic support of life theme. Thus, there is need for continued training of health sciences students on the subject, at the undergraduate level.