Teaching Basic Life Support in Undergraduate Nursing Programs

BLS education is intended to bridge the gap between actual and desired performance, enabling BLS providers to acquire knowledge and skills, improving their ability to recognize and respond to patients at risk of cardiac arrest, improving resuscitation performance, and ensuring continuous quality improvement activities. Ensuring that victims of cardiac arrest receive care consistent with the current state of scientific knowledge has great potential to save thousands of lives. Nurses are usually the first to respond to a cardiac arrest and initiate BLS maneuvers while waiting for the advanced support team to arrive. The immediate, competent, and safe application of resuscitation maneuvers by the first responders are factors that contribute to the success of care and, consequently, to neurologically intact survival in people who have suffered a cardiac arrest. Thus, it is necessary to mobilize the cognitive, psychomotor, and affective skills inherent to the competence of the nursing team to act in these occurrences.