A Cognitive Aid for Cardiac Arrest: You Can’t Use It if You Don’t Know About It

Abstract

Background

A cognitive aid developed by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and distributed to all VA facilities provides caregivers with information to minimize omission of critical steps when diagnosing and treating cardiac arrest. In 2002, caregivers were surveyed about the usefulness of the cognitive aid and the success of its dissemination throughout the VA.

Methods

Fifty randomly selected VA hospitals were sent a letter to alert them of the upcoming survey. Twenty surveys were sent to each of the selected hospitals with instructions to distribute the survey to specific caregiver types.

Results

Nine (18%) of the VA hospitals had not used the cognitive aid tool because of dissemination problems. Of the 565 caregivers responding to the survey, 59% (332) were aware of the cognitive aid. Of these 332, 96% agreed that putting the cognitive aid on code carts is a good idea. There were 234 respondents who were both aware of the cognitive aid and had been involved in at least one code within the past 30 days. Of these 234, some 29 (12%) used the aid during a code, 28 of whom agreed that the cognitive aid was helpful during the code.

Discussion

Both new and experienced caregivers find the cognitive aid helpful when responding to “code” situations. However, cognitive aids cannot be helpful if the intended users are unaware of their availability. Dissemination and awareness of the aids can be problematic in large health care systems.