American Hospital Dubai launches American Heart Association's Resuscitation Quality Improvement (RQI) Program to boost cardiac arrest survival

UAE, November 2, 2017 - The American Hospital Dubai has announced it is going ahead with its plans to implement the Resuscitation Quality Improvement (RQI) Program of the American Heart Association (AHA). With the successful deployment of the system, the hospital will become the first healthcare facility in the Middle East to implement the AHA-branded version of the pioneering training program from the AHA for high-quality cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and improved patient outcomes. 

CPR may seem to be a basic skill for healthcare providers but research has shown that psychomotor skills related to resuscitation can decay within just three to six months – far before the two-year standard when basic and advanced life support skills are currently evaluated. American Hospital Dubai knows the importance of high-quality CPR in saving more lives and has implemented the RQI program to help staff maintain skill competency and achieve better patient outcomes through regular, low-dose/high-frequency high-quality CPR training.  

Peter Makowski, CEO, American Hospital Dubai, said: “The American Heart Association created RQI to teach healthcare providers high-quality CPR in a more effective, concise and convenient way that drives them to practice and retain these skills with confidence.  The system will allow the American Hospital Dubai to ensure their healthcare providers regularly refresh CPR skills and perform with confidence during an emergency. We always strive to offer the best and most innovative healthcare solutions to our customers. The deployment of the RQI system is one more system in place to help ensure that our team of healthcare providers are prepared to handle cardiac arrest related emergencies at any time.”

RQI is intended to improve Basic Life Support (BLS) and Advanced Cardiovascular Life Support (ACLS) skills, while making training more convenient for healthcare providers. Students can take the cognitive components of testing online and then test their psychomotor skills with real-time feedback by performing CPR at mobile Simulation Stations equipped with adult and infant manikins. At each RQI Station, a tablet connects the student to training material and provides helpful audiovisual feedback for compressions and ventilations, monitors the quality of performance and provides reinforcement or suggestions for improvement. 

The 2010 American Heart Association Guidelines for CPR and ECC and the 2013 CPR Quality Consensus Statement state that high-quality CPR should be recognized as the foundation for all other resuscitative efforts because it increases patient survival. The AHA RQI program helps provide better CPR. Learn more about the problem of rapid skills decay and the solution that RQI offers at www.heart.org/RQI.