The System-Wide Effect of Real-Time Audiovisual Feedback and Postevent Debriefing for In-Hospital Cardiac Arrest: The Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation Quality Improvement Initiative

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the effect of implementing real-time audiovisual feedback with and without postevent debriefing on survival and quality of cardiopulmonary resuscitation quality at in-hospital cardiac arrest.

DESIGN: A two-phase, multicentre prospective cohort study.

SETTING: Three UK hospitals, all part of one National Health Service Acute Trust.

PATIENTS: One thousand three hundred and ninety-five adult patients who sustained an in-hospital cardiac arrest at the study hospitals and were treated by hospital emergency teams between November 2009 and May 2013.

INTERVENTIONS: During phase 1, quality of cardiopulmonary resuscitation and patient outcomes were measured with no intervention implemented. During phase 2, staff at hospital 1 received real-time audiovisual feedback, whereas staff at hospital 2 received real-time audiovisual feedback supplemented by postevent debriefing. No intervention was implemented at hospital 3 during phase 2.

MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS: The primary outcome was return of spontaneous circulation. Secondary endpoints included other patient-focused outcomes, such as survival to hospital discharge, and process-focused outcomes, such as chest compression depth. Random-effect logistic and linear regression models, adjusted for baseline patient characteristics, were used to analyze the effect of the interventions on study outcomes. In comparison with no intervention, neither real-time audiovisual feedback (adjusted odds ratio, 0.62; 95% CI, 0.31-1.22; p = 0.17) nor real-time audiovisual feedback supplemented by postevent debriefing (adjusted odds ratio, 0.65; 95% CI, 0.35-1.21; p = 0.17) was associated with a statistically significant improvement in return of spontaneous circulation or any process-focused outcome. Despite this, there was evidence of a system-wide improvement in phase 2, leading to improvements in return of spontaneous circulation (adjusted odds ratio, 1.87; 95% CI, 1.06-3.30; p = 0.03) and process-focused outcomes.

CONCLUSIONS: Implementation of real-time audiovisual feedback with or without postevent debriefing did not lead to a measured improvement in patient or process-focused outcomes at individual hospital sites. However, there was an unexplained system-wide improvement in return of spontaneous circulation and process-focused outcomes during the second phase of the study.This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.