CREATIVITY IN BLS EDUCATION FOR MEDICAL STUDENTS Introduction As a first-year medical student wearing your new white coat, you embark on your first community experience—a home visit with your geriatric mentor at their house along with a first-year colleague. Over coffee and scones, just as you’re getting to know your mentor while gathering their history, they start complaining of chest pain. Knowing their extensive cardiac history, you immediately go to call 911 and notice they are unresponsive. You contemplate what you, as a first-year medical student, are expected and able to do. There are more than 350,000 out-of-hospital cardiac arrests each year.1 During medical school, students are taught Basic Life Support (BLS), but schools provide the training at different times over the four years. Several osteopathic medical schools provide formal BLS education during the first year or even orientation. At some schools, students take an emergency medical technician class at the beginning of first year. Though BLS certification is provided just prior to clerkship years at the University of New England College of Osteopathic Medicine (UNE COM), a group of medical students at UNE COM believed that BLS is an important set of skills that should be gained earlier
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THE PULSE SPRING 2022
in medical school education. Preclerkship years at UNE COM include several clinical experiences that involve visiting older adult mentors in their home. UNE COM medical students have encountered sudden cardiac arrests in the local community. Seeing all of this, that group of medical students within the EM Club at UNE COM, a chapter of the ACOEP RSO, took it upon themselves to host a BLS course. The unique course, drawing from the previous experience and education of EM Club members, was designed and delivered almost entirely by first- and second-year medical students. Offered twice before the COVID-19 pandemic altered course delivery in medical school, over forty medical students were certified in BLS. Setting Expectations Throughout medical education, students are learning alongside clinicians, both dressed in white coats. This most often occurs during clerkships but does occur in preclerkship years when students have minimal clinical training or experience. It may be difficult for the layperson to distinguish between an experienced clinician and a student. With the white coat comes the price of public perception, even as a first-year student—one that sets expectations for a level of competency, knowledge,
and trustworthiness.2 In fact, patient perception of knowledge was highest for physicians who sport the white coat either formally or with scrubs. 3 This expectation is not reserved for physicians in white coats but is often assumed for all in white coats, thus including medical students. Though the adults involved in UNE COM’s geriatric programs are aware of students’ status as pre-clerkship learners, most are unaware of medical education curricula and student proficiencies. The gap between expectation and knowledge could be the difference in a medical student initiating BLS in the case of an emergency. In addition to the pre-clerkship concerns, there is an expectation that students receive sufficient training in BLS and Advanced Cardiovascular Life Support (ACLS) when they move to the next phase of medical education. In fact, 68.9% of residency program directors feel it is important to have BLS skills assessed in the first year of residency, and 90.1% of surveyed directors believe it should be assessed during training at some point.4 The Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) requires competency at providing early management of patients in critical condition with basic and advanced life support as requirements for
