Innovations in basic life support education for healthcare providers: improving competence in cardiopulmonary resuscitation through self-directed learning.

Providing cardiopulmonary resuscitation is an essential competency for nurses. Nurse educators involved in staff development and continuing education spend numerous hours offering basic life support courses and conducting performance improvement activities such as mock codes. This study provides evidence that cardiopulmonary resuscitation performance skills using self-directed learning methods are as good as or, on a number of parameters, better than those achieved with a more resource- and time-intensive traditional approach.