Training St John Ambulance volunteers to use an automated external defibrillator.

The key to improving survival from pre-hospital cardiac arrest lies in reducing the time interval between onset of cardiac arrest and defibrillation. Placing automated external defibrillators at strategic points in the community could potentially reduce this time interval, but would necessitate widespread training in defibrillation for lay people in addition to health care workers. There are unanswered questions regarding the ability of lay people to acquire and retain this skill when the training programme is, by necessity, very brief, (otherwise it would not be possible to train large enough numbers of people) and the skill is used infrequently. In this study, nurse and lay volunteer first-aiders were taught to use an automated external defibrillator, either by a 2-h, or a 4-h course, and their skills were assessed at training, and at 3 and 6 months afterwards. Using stringent assessment criteria, 54% of volunteers passed the assessment at every session. Little difference in acquisition or retention of skills between the nurse and lay volunteers, and the 2- and 4-h course groups was found. It is concluded that brief training in defibrillation for volunteer first-aiders is feasible.