Evaluation of an educational intervention into an emergency department to improve diagnosis and early treatment in STEMI

Type of funding sources: Public grant(s) – National budget only. Main funding source(s): The Government of Catalonia (Spain) provided funding for this research, with a grant issued in 2019 within the framework of the Strategic Health Research and Innovation Plan (PERIS) 2016-2020 to Gemma Berga Congost

Clinical guidelines recommend some quality indicators to measure the effectiveness of ST-elevation acute myocardial infarction (STEMI) treatment. Adherence to these indicators is complex in atypical presentations, due to delayed diagnosis. Ongoing training is a useful tool in improving STEMI diagnosis.

Our aim was to evaluate the impact of a training intervention incorporating clinical simulation tools for emergency triage nurses and doctors on STEMI diagnosis.

a prospective observational study was carry out in a STEMI hub hospital. All emergency professionals gave their consent and were included into the training. A theoretical-practical training activity with clinical simulation was designed and implemented in June 2021. Pre and post knowledge were assessed using a questionnaire validates by a group of experts and a validated satisfaction survey was performed.

20 professionals were included, 16 nurses and 4 physicians. 95% viewed all the online content and participated into the face-to-face training. All fulfilled the questionnaire pre-training and 70% the post-training. A 50% increase in the knowledge, evaluated by questionnaire, was observed. 80% of the participants evaluated as satisfactory the intervention with an excellent rating was obtained.

There was a high degree of participation into the training. The knowledge of the participants increased by more than 50% and their satisfaction with the educational intervention was excellent. Future studies are required to assess the impact of training on STEMI response time, clinical outcomes and mortality.