Introduction: Sudden cardiac death (SCD) is a sudden, unexpected cardiac arrest with a deadly outcome within one hour from the onset of the symptoms. Every year around 275 000 people in Europe experience out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA). (1) It is estimated that about 60% of those persons die immediately. In recent decades, great public importance has been given to the progress of survival rates of heart attack victims and the reduction of irreversible neurological consequences. For this purpose, there have been organized cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) courses at numerous places, and automatically external defibrillators (AEDs) have been set in the healthcare facilities and in places where a large number of people circulate. (2) In 2010, the American Heart Association recommended continuing education of CPR for healthcare professionals once every two years. (3) In the Republic of Croatia there is no statutory obligation of continuous education of CPR for healthcare professional.

Methods and Results: The cardiology team at the Health Center Osijek has organized three times in the past three years practical courses on basic life support at reanimation dolls with the use of an AED for the purpose of continuous CPR education and getting acquainted with AED’s work. 213 health professionals from the Health Center Osijek and Valpovo, including physicians, nurses and dentists, attended the courses voluntarily. At the end of the course, the participants filled in an anonymous questionnaire. 122 participants were in the age group 20-40 years, 21 between 40-50 years, 52 in the group 50-60 years and 18 older than 60 years. 51 participants had a working experience <5 years, 57 participants 5-15 years, 59 participants 15-30 years and 46 participants had >30 years of work experience. 64 participants had previously worked in the hospital, 53 participants actively participated in reanimation during their lifetime, 80 participants had previously passed some of the CPR courses, and only 59 of them were considered to be sufficiently educated prior to the course. The participants evaluated the course extremely useful and at the end of the course 211 said that the CPR courses should be repeated on average every 2 years.

Conclusion: Health care professionals of primary health care should repeat the CPR course at least every 2 years in order to improve the quality of the procedure.