Article Contribution: Dr. Takahiro Matsumoto is head of a home-visit clinic in Ena City in Japan. He is an active volunteer and is the representative director of the non-profit organization JPSOCLS (Japan Patient Safety Foundation for Organizational Culture and Learning System).
Global Impact: Understanding the AHA Education Statement in Japan
In 2018, the American Heart Association (AHA) published a statement on cardiopulmonary resuscitation education in Circulation titled Resuscitation Education Science: Educational Strategies to Improve Outcomes From Cardiac Arrest. The statement was developed to promote the construction of learning content based on science and the application of instructional design, which is an area of educational engineering to promote education, training and implementation.
The statement says “Although millions of lay providers and healthcare providers are trained in resuscitation every year, major gaps exist in the delivery of optimal clinical care (ie, poor-quality CPR or no CPR in the out-of-hospital setting) for individuals with cardiac arrest” and that “enhancing instructional design in these contexts can improve educational outcomes (ie, provider knowledge, skills, and attitudes), which will ultimately translate to improved patient outcomes and survival after cardiac arrest.” [1] The application of instructional design was recommended.
In Japan, the Japanese Society for Instruction Systems in Healthcare (JSISH), an academic organization that promotes patient safety by applying instructional design to healthcare, has established an international training center (JSISH-ITC) for AHA Emergency Cardiovascular Care (AHA ECC) program. Instructional Design (ID) theory has been implemented in various educational activities within their programs. This statement recommends the application of ID to improve cardiopulmonary resuscitation education, but for many healthcare professionals, it may not be so simple to understand and apply to practice. We translated the AHA Education Statement to Japanese and published it. In addition, we published the article “To apply the AHA proposals for resuscitation science education” in the Japan Journal of Health Professional Development (JJHPD), which is the JSISH’s academic journal for the exposition of the statement and proposal of the application in practice.[2]
Furthermore, to spread awareness and knowledge about the above, we held a symposium on June 15, 2019, about “Understanding the AHA statement for Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation Education.” During the symposium, instructional design experts, JSISH representative directors, and practitioners who apply ID to healthcare education presented exposition, proposals and real case studies of ID application in healthcare. These were recorded and will be distributed on DVD.[3]
The efforts continue after the symposium and there are new practice examples. One of them is a cardiopulmonary resuscitation course focused on the learning content for appropriate competence in clinical environment. Another example is a seminar for faculty development that CPR instructors to play active role as ‘change agent’ in their has to improve its performance.
If understood deeply and widely in Japan, this AHA statement has high possibility to support improvement and implementation of CPR but also to improve patient safety in Japan.
[1]https://cpr.heart.org/en/resuscitation-science/education-statement
[2] http://idportal.gsis.kumamoto-u.ac.jp/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2019/04/JSISH_matsumotosuzuki.pdf
[3] https://www.zenkanan.info/dvd
Japan Patient Safety Foundation for Organizational Culture and Learning System (JPSOCLS)、https://www.zenkanan.com/
Matsumoto Takahiro, M.D., Ph.D
Okamoto Hanae, RN, MSN.
Shingo Kuroyanagi, CE.