P2.101: Medical Student Experience During Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation Events

Background: Exposure to stressful situations is commonplace for medical providers. Appropriate stress in the setting of intense experiences can promote personal and professional growth but can also be detrimental if excessive. Therefore, the response to these situations and the resiliency developed from stressful clinical events are important for medical providers. Distress following stressful events affects all physicians; however, junior providers are most at risk for increased stress response requiring support following these events. Compared with residents, the experience of medical students in the face of stressful situations is less well described. We aim to understand the medical student’s experience during cardiopulmonary events to determine if they felt they had appropriate stress during and adequate coping following the CPR event.

Methods: Fourth-year medical students enrolled in the 4-week critical care course at the University of Utah completed pre and post course surveys aimed at determining their experience and comfort with CRP events. Additionally, students participated in post-course focus groups to determine their experience and perceived coping. To date 2 of 12 planned focus groups have been completed. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze the surveys to determine exposure to CPR events and inductive thematic analysis was applied to the focus groups to identify themes.

Results: Quantitative survey results showed by the end of the course, exposure to any CPR events increased from 50% (n=42) to 68% (n=25) after the course. 69% (n=42) of students did not feel as though their curriculum prior to the start of the critical care course prepared them for participation in CPR events. Following the first two focus groups with 30 total participants, the most common themes are as follows: discussion of coping skills such at compartmentalization (n=13), talking with someone (n=9) and mentor check in (n=8) (Table 1). Additionally, several participants mentioned lack of skills/training (n=19), lack of post processing options (n=8) and expressed interest in additional post-processing skills/education (n=6) (Table 1).

Conclusion: Exposure to stressful situations is an expected part of physician development that can lead to personal and professional growth; however, excessive stress can be detrimental. Medical students who participated in focus groups identified CPR events as stressful and emotionally challenging. They identified several coping skills including compartmentalization, talking with co-workers or trusted friends or family member. Additionally, there is emerging evidence to support students feel inadequately prepared from both a skills and emotional post-processing standpoint. This evidence could support curriculum development to improve medical trainee comfort and resilience in the face of CPR events and other stressful situations.