Introduction:

Bystander cardiopulmonary resuscitation increases the chances of survival by seven times.

Objective:

To assess the effectiveness of a simulated clinical situation carried out in homes to raise the level of knowledge about basic cardiopulmonary resuscitation in adults.

Methods:

A before-and-after study without a control group was carried out between September and December 2018. The universe consisted of 620 patients from a family doctor’s office belonging to 19 de Abril Outpatient Polyclinic in Plaza de la Revolución Municipality (Havana, Cuba). A sample of 200 patients was selected and a survey was applied on them, carried out by the authors, before and after the intervention, which was subjected to an alpha test for internal validation. For the assessment of the demonstration, Student's t test, variance analysis (ANOVA) and a post hoc analysis were used.

Results:

The mean age was 45.45 ± 14.45 years. The female sex predominated, with 102 people (51%). There were 63 (32%) patients with an associate’s degree. The difference in the means of scores before and after the demonstration was statistically significant in all school levels (P˂0.001). There were differences in the increase of scores after the simulated performance between the university students and the people with sixth grade (P=0.013).

Conclusions:

Performance of a simulated clinical situation was an effective tool to raise the level of knowledge of the population under study, regardless of their level of education.