Attitudes of trained Swedish lay rescuers toward CPR performance in an emergency.: A survey of 1012 recently trained CPR rescuers

There are currently 1.5 million trained cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) rescuers in Sweden. Bystander CPR is performed on approximate to 30% of out-of-hospital cardiac arrests. The aim of this study was to analyse trained CPR rescuers' attitudes and beliefs in terms of CPR performance in an emergency and differences with regard to gender, age, residential area and occupation. In a nation wide survey 1410, randomly selected, recently trained CPR rescuers were approached with a postal questionnaire, resulting in 1012 respondents. The mean age was 36.9 years and only 3% of the respondents were > 59 years old. Only 1% had attended the course because of their own or a relative's cardiac disease. Ninety-four per cent believed there was a minor to major risk of serious disease transmission while performing CPR. When predicting their willingness to perform CPR in six scenarios, 17% would not start CPR on a young drug addict, 7% would not perform CPR on an unkempt man, while 97% were sure about starting CPR on a relative and 91% on a known person. In four of six scenarios, respondents from rural areas were significantly more positive than respondents from metropolitan areas about starting CPR. In conclusion, readiness to perform CPR on a known person is high among trained CPR rescuers, while hesitation about performing CPR on a stranger is evident. Respondents from rural areas are more frequently positive about starting CPR than those from metropolitan areas. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.