Community attitudes towards performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation in Western Australia

Abstract

Objective: to determine the attitudes of the Western Australian community towards performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation, and the factors affecting these attitudes. Methods: telephone survey of a randomly selected sample of people from suburban Perth and rural Western Australia; practical assessment of a sub-sample of volunteers from those surveyed, to correlate survey answers with practical skills. Results: of 803 people surveyed, the majority (90.7%) definitely would give mouth-to-mouth ventilation to a friend or relative, but less than half (47.2%) would to a stranger. The reluctance was mostly (56%) because of health and safety concerns, particularly related to HIV infection. Higher pe..