Nurses’ Performance and Attitude toward Initiation of Advanced Cardiac Life Support and Defibrillation Shocks at Intensive Care Units

Background: Advanced cardiac life support, involving chest compressions andventilation, is essential for reducing organ damage and enhancing survival rates followingcardiac arrest. The expertise and skills of nurses in providing advanced cardiac life supportare essential for providing successful resuscitation and improving patient outcomes. Aim:Evaluate nurses' performance and attitudes for initiating advanced cardiac life support anddefibrillation shocks in intensive care units. Subjects and Method: A descriptive crosssectionalresearch design was utilized in the current study. Subjects: All nurses (187) 48nurses work in Cardiac Care Unit, 43nuses work in Medical Intensive Care Unit and 96nurses’ work in Surgical Intensive Care Unit. Tools: The researcher developed three tools,as following. Tool (I) Nurses' Knowledge Regarding Initiation of Advanced Cardiac LifeSupport and defibrillation shocks; Part (a) Nurses' Patients' clinical data, as well as theirsociodemographic characteristics. Part (b): Nurses' knowledge regarding initiation ofAdvanced Cardiac Life Support and defibrillation shocks. Tool (II): Observational CheckList of Nurses’ Practice toward Initiation of Advanced Cardiac Life Support and GivingDefibrillation Shocks. Tool (III): Nurses’ Attitude toward Initiation of Advanced CardiacLife Support and Giving Defibrillation Shocks. Results: it was found that low level ofnurses' knowledge was associated with high level (78.07%) of unsatisfactory practice leveland 76.47% of low attitude level regarding initiation of advanced cardiac life support andgiving defibrillation shocks among the studied nurses. There was no significant relationbetween socio–demographic characteristics of the studied nurses and their knowledgescore or practice score or attitude score were observed where p >0.05. Conclusions: Thestudied nurses had low level of nurses' knowledge associated with high level ofunsatisfactory practice level and negative attitude regarding advanced cardiac life supportand defibrillation shocks. Recommendations: Create polices, protocols and effectivecomprehensive training programs to update nurses' knowledge and skills in AdvancedCardiac Life Support (ACLS) in ICUs.