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Program Evaluation
After the AED program has been in place for a month or two, it is a good
idea for the Planning Committee to meet again to begin evaluating the
program. Meetings for this purpose need not be held more often than
quarterly and it should be made clear that the purpose is to evaluate the
program, not how well specific individuals are learning or applying the
skills.
Initial meetings may focus on how many
people have volunteered to be trained, what comments are circulating about
the program, and questions that may require answers. The committee’s
purpose will be to publicly recognize those who have volunteered,
encourage others to take the training, and put to rest any inaccuracies
that are making the rounds.
As time goes on, the committee will want
to look at the results of drills both as to the extent to which AED/CPR
skills are retained by employees and the effectiveness of the entire
agency in responding to simulated cardiac arrests. In the first case,
decisions may be made to increase the frequency of refresher courses and
individual drills if performance seems to be slipping or to keep the
interval the same if performance is near criterion levels. In reference
to the agency-wide drills, there is nothing like a dry run to point out
those procedures that look good on paper but simply don’t work. Feedback
from such drills should be used to revise subsequent drafts of the plan.
Your committee may never have the
opportunity to evaluate your agency’s response to a real-life cardiac
emergency (we hope!). If such a disaster occurs, the committee should
meet as soon after the event as possible to evaluate the agency’s
emergency response. If the victim survives, there still may be some
experiences that were gained that will be useful should a cardiac arrest
occur in the future. If the victim dies, it doesn’t necessarily mean that
the agency failed in any way. AEDs are the best tools available to us in
restoring normal heart rhythm, but they aren’t successful every time they
are used. Sometimes an objective evaluation following a death serves as a
catharsis for those who worked on the victim and wonder whether his death
was caused by something they did or didn’t do.
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