The Effect of Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation and Cardiac Chest Pain Management Training on Perceived Control, Depression, Stress and Anxiety in the Spouses of the Patients with Myocardial Infarction: A Randomized Controlled Trial.
Fatemeh Afrasiabi, Zahra Molazem, Arash Mani and 1 others
PMID 32309453WHAT IT FOUND
A combined CPR and chest pain management education package lowered spouses' depression, anxiety and stress and increased their sense of control over six weeks.
Those who did not receive it had symptoms that rose. It was family education, not patient treatment.
Key findings
01After adjusting for baseline, the training group had a higher internal sense of control than the control group.
02After adjusting for baseline, the training group had lower depression, anxiety and stress scores than the control group.
03The training group's depression, anxiety and stress scores decreased from pretest to posttest, while the control group's scores increased.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
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What it does not show
The study was small, with 40 in the training group and 38 in the control group. Follow-up was only six weeks, so it does not show whether effects last. The training was a package of CPR, chest pain management, manikin practice, pamphlets, video and telephone follow-up, so the contribution of any single component cannot be separated. The control group received routine education about illness and medications, so the comparison is with usual education, not no education. Outcomes were self-reported by spouses, and the paper does not state that participants or outcome assessors were blinded. The paper does not identify a primary outcome, so the four psychological outcomes should be read together. Only spouses of patients admitted to a cardiac care unit in Iran were included, so generalisability to other settings is unclear.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that CPR alone reduced spouses' distress or improved patient outcomes. The spouses received a package of chest pain management education, CPR training, manikin practice, pamphlets, a video and telephone follow-up, and the study measured spouses' psychological scores, not patient survival.