A national cross-sectional study on the retention of basic life support knowledge among nurses in Palestine.

Background: 17.9 million deaths worldwide were attributable to cardiovascular diseases. Basic life support is one of the crucial strategies that could increase chances of cardiac arrest victims' survival rate by nurses and other healthcare providers.

Aim: The aims of this study was to examine the retention of the BLS knowledge among nurses in Palestine.

Methods: A descriptive cross-sectional design was used to collect data from 108 nurses between February 2022 and April 2022 from two AHA-ITCs in Palestine. The instrument consisted of two sections; demographics and knowledge test which was developed by the researcher and contain a written examination containing 25 multiple-choice questions.

Results: Out of 160 distributed questionnaires, 108 were completed by nurses as a convenience sampling technique. Over half of the participants were male (54.6%), and the majority had a bachelor's degree in nursing (75%). Analysis identified that there was a significant difference (t (107) = 18.02, p < 0.001) and less knowledge score in the year 2022 (M = 65.48, SD = 15.42), compared to the year 2020 (M = 92.09, SD = 4.01). The mean knowledge reduction was 26.61 and P < 0.001. The results showed no statistically significant differences in terms of level of BLS knowledge in all sociodemographic, except the level of education.

Conclusions: The results of this study revealed weak retention of BLS knowledge among nurses in Palestine between the years 2020 and the year of 2022. Nurses must regularly participate in BLS training and attend frequent in-service CPR training at least every 6-months to decrease the likelihood of knowledge and skills loss over time. Blended learning BLS is one of the methods to retain more knowledge and skills of BLS.