Attitudes of trained Swedish lay rescuers toward CPR performance in an emergency. A survey of 1012 recently trained CPR rescuers

There are currently 1.5 million trained cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) rescuers in Sweden. Bystander CPR is performed on approximate to 30% of ou t-of-hospital cardiac arrests. The aim of this study was to analyse trained CPR rescuers' attitudes and beliefs in terms of CPR performance in an emer gency and differences with regard to gender, age, residential area and occu pation. In a nation wide survey 1410, randomly selected, recently trained C PR rescuers were approached with a postal questionnaire, resulting in 1012 respondents. The mean age was 36.9 years and only 3% of the respondents wer e > 59 years old. Only 1% had attended the course because of their own or a relative's cardiac disease. Ninety-four per cent believed there was a mino r to major risk of serious disease transmission while performing CPR. When predicting their willingness to perform CPR in six scenarios, 17% would not start CPR on a young drug addict, 7% would not perform CPR on an unkempt m an, while 97% were sure about starting CPR on a relative and 91% on a known person. In four of six scenarios, respondents from rural areas were signif icantly more positive than respondents from metropolitan areas about starti ng CPR. In conclusion, readiness to perform CPR on a known person is high a mong trained CPR rescuers, while hesitation about performing CPR on a stran ger is evident. Respondents from rural areas are more frequently positive a bout starting CPR than those from metropolitan areas. (C) 2000 Elsevier Sci ence Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.