Assessing Malaysian School Teachers’ Readiness to Teach Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation and Automated External Defibrillators: Knowledge, Attitudes, Willingness and Barriers

Implementing cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) in schools is recommended to improve cardiac arrest survival.However, Malaysian curricula lack CPR and automated external defibrillators (AED) education.This study assessed teachers' knowledge, attitudes, willingness and perceived barriers to teaching CPR and AED.A two-stage stratified random sampling method was employed to choose 400 school teachers from 20 primary and secondary schools across the Selangor state, Malaysia.A self-administered questionnaire was distributed, comprising questions on knowledge of CPR and AED, attitude and willingness towards teaching CPR and AED and perceived facilitators and barriers to implementing CPR and AED in schools.A total of 165 participants (57% female) completed the survey.Only two teachers (1.2%) passed the knowledge test, and 74.5% reported that no CPR training had been conducted in their school within the past two years.While 57.6% were willing to teach CPR, 61.8% faced barriers such as limited knowledge, lack of time and resources.Other barriers to implementing CPR curriculum included perceived lack of support from the government at the central, state and district levels, a lack of funding and perceived students' lack of interest.Results of the Multivariate Analysis of Variance showed non-significant results, indicating that levels of attitude, willingness and perceived barriers remained consistent across all teachers regardless of their background, underscoring a uniform need for improved CPR education.The study highlights a willingness to teach CPR and AED among school teachers.However, there is a need for improving teachers' CPR knowledge, and removing structural and institutional barriers which hinder the successful implementation of CPR curriculum in Malaysian schools.