Basic Life Support (BLS) Course

FORMERLY BLS FOR HEALTHCARE PROVIDERS

Basic Life Support (BLS) is the foundation for saving lives after cardiac arrest. It is designed for healthcare providers and trained first responders who provide care to patients in a wide variety of settings and teaches both single-rescuer and team basic life support skills for application in pre-hospital and in-facility settings.

The new BLS Provider Course is equivalent to the BLS for Healthcare Providers (BLS for HCP) course it replaces. This course trains participants to promptly recognize several life-threatening emergencies, give high-quality chest compressions, deliver appropriate ventilations, and provide early use of an AED. It includes adult, child, and infant rescue techniques. The BLS course includes realistic scenarios, simulations and state-of-the-art animations, and incorporates Heart and Stroke Foundation’s proven Practice-While-Watching video format to bring the science of the 2015 Guidelines Update for CPR and ECC to the front line practitioner.

The NEW BLS Course

The new BLS course is a video-based, Instructor-led course that teaches both single-rescuer and team basic life support skills for application in both in-facility and pre-hospital settings, with a focus on high-quality CPR and team dynamics. The new BLS Provider course, based on the 2015 Guidelines, replaces the BLS for Healthcare Providers course, while offering the high-quality education you’d expect from the Heart and Stroke Foundation. The new format making it easier to tailor a broader audience.

The Heart and Stroke Foundation’s BLS Course offers:

• The latest resuscitation science for improved patient outcomes
• Realistic scenarios, simulations, and animations depicting rescuers, teams, and patients

The responsibility of obtaining the textbook is up to you, the participant, and is not included in the course. 

Textbooks can be purchased directly from the Heart and Stroke Foundation (Welcome to HSF Resuscitation (gilmoreglobal.com)).

Intended Audience

This course is designed for healthcare providers and trained first responders who provide care to patients in a wide variety of both in-facility and pre-hospital settings or by those that require BLS certification and CPR training to enter into a healthcare-related training program.

Course Overview

The BLS Provider Course focuses on what rescuers need to know to perform high-quality CPR in a wide variety of settings. You will also learn how to respond to choking emergencies. Course contents and outcomes include:

• Importance of high-quality CPR and its impact on survival
• Steps of the Chain of Survival and applying the BLS concepts of the Chain of Survival
• Recognize the signs of someone needing CPR
• Perform high-quality CPR for adults, children and infants
• Importance of early defibrillation and use of an AED
• Use of a barrier device to provide effective ventilations
• Importance of teams in multi-rescuer resuscitation and performing as an effective team member during multi-rescuer CPR
• Technique for relief of foreign-body airway obstruction (choking) in adults, children and infants

Course Duration

Approximate course duration: 4 hours
Approximate course duration with Optional Local Protocol Discussion: 4 hours 30 minutes*
* Course durations provided are based on a student-to-instructor ratio for learning stations of 6:1, and does not include additional times needed for breaks or transitions, or additional students.

Course Completion Card & Expiration Date

Students who successfully complete the course will receive an email that provides access to their BLS Provider eCard. This electronic proof of course completion can be accessed directly online, downloaded or printed for convenience. A formal printed course completion card from Heart and Stroke Foundation is available for an additional fee.

All Heart and Stroke Foundation Basic Life Support completion cards are valid for 1 year from the date of successful course completion.

At the time of launch there is no “Renewal course” for the new 2015 Guidelines BLS course. Renewal options will be communicated at a future date.

The current recommended timeline for renewal of the BLS Provider Course completion card is every year. Although there is insufficient evidence to determine optimal renewal timing, research on skills retention and training have identified important outcomes:

• There is growing evidence that BLS knowledge and skills decay rapidly after initial training.
• Studies have demonstrated the deterioration of BLS skills within a few months after initial training.
• Studies examining the effect of brief, more frequent training sessions demonstrated improvement in chest compression performance and shorter time to defibrillation.
• Studies have found that students reported improved confidence and willingness to perform CPR after additional or high-frequency training.

Given how fast BLS skills decay after training, and with the observed improvement in skill and confidence among students who train more frequently, students should be encouraged to periodically review their Provider Manual and practice CPR and AED skills whenever possible.