gms | German Medical Science

Introduction: Purposeful sequencing of learning content is thought to be of major importance for learning of complex skills such as resuscitation [1]. Therefore, in all undergraduate curricula "Basic Life Support"(BLS) is followed by "Advanced Life Support" (ALS).

Objectives: We sought to evaluate, whether this assumption could actually be proven, since it might as well be possible that BLS after ALS helps to consolidate resuscitation competencies by reflecting on the basic necessities.

Materials & methods: We randomly assigned medical students in their second clinical year to either first perform a BLS scenario teaching of 2 hrs followed by an ALS scenario teaching of 4 hrs, or to start with the 4hrs scenario teaching of ALS followed by 2 hrs of BLS. 14 days after the course students were evaluated by one OSCE station with BLS and partially ALS content (which was part of the clinical OSCE at the end of year 4).

Results: The data sets of 120 students from the BLS-ALS and 127 students from the ALS-BLS sequence could be included into analysis (88.5% of total cohort). Students from the BLS-ALS sequence reached a mean score of 60.9 (±8.2 SD) points, compared to 63.2 (±7.7 SD) pts in the ALS-BLS group. The difference was statistically significant in favor of the ALS-BLS group (p=.025; t-test).

Conclusion: Our data indicate, that sequencing of BLS before ALS max not be obligatory. This would justify to design training parcours in both fashions and provide more flexibility to course planning. Mechanisms behind this finding should be subject of further investigation.