Evaluation of cardiopulmonary resuscitation quality during the pandemic of COVID-19

Background Cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) is an important technique of first aid. It is necessary to be popularized. Large-scale offline training has been affected after the outbreak of Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Online training will be the future trend, but the quality of online assessment is unclear. This study aims to compare online and offline evaluations of CPR quality using digital simulator and specialist scoring methods. Methods Forty-eight out of 108 contestants who participated in the second Chinese National CPR Skill Competition held in 2020 were included in this study. The competition comprised two stages. In the preliminary online competition, the contestants practiced on the digital simulator while the specialist teams scored live videos. The final competition was held offline, and consisted of live simulator scoring and specialist scoring. The grades of the simulator and specialists in different stages were compared. Results There was no statistical significance for simulator grades between online and offline competition(37.7 ± 2.0 vs. 36.4 ± 3.4, p = 0.169). For specialists’ grades, the video scores were lower than live scores (55.0 ± 1.4 vs. 57.2 ± 1.7, p < 0.001). Conclusion Simulator scoring provided better reliability than specialist scoring in the online evaluation of CPR quality. However, the simulator could only collect quantified data. Specialist scoring is necessary in conjunction with online tests to provide a comprehensive evaluation. A complete and standardized CPR quality evaluation system can be established by combining simulator and specialist contributions.