Course Structure and Content
The Immediate Life Support course is a Resuscitation Council (UK) accredited course that teaches a standardised approach to cardiolulmonary resuscitation, basic airway management and safe defibrillation. Its aim is to enable healthcare professionals to manage patients in cardiac arrest until the arrival of more advanced practitioners and then to participate as members of the cardiac arrest team.
The course is of one-day's duration and consists of lectures, practical workshops and cardiac arrest simulation teaching (CASTeach). A course manual is sent to candidates two-weeks prior to the course and candidates are expected to have studied this thoroughly before attending the course. Assessment of knowledge and skills is performed on a continuous basis throughout the course.
Whilst the ILS course was predominantly intended to teach resuscitation of patients in the acute hospital setting, the content is applicable to all clinical settings and teaching can be adapted to ensure relevance to the candidates own environment. Focussed training on topics of specific interest to the candidate group (e.g. rhythm recognition, cardiac arrest drugs, transcutaneous pacing) can be included at the discretion of the course director as long as there is no detriment to the core content, which is as follows:
