Articles: emergency-medicine.
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The optimal format for teaching advanced cardiac life support (ACLS) to medical students and other groups with little emergency medicine experience has not been studied extensively. We report an ACLS provider course that was taught to sophomore medical students using a self-directed, problem-based learning model. The traditional two-day provider course format was replaced by a series of clinical problems that emphasized various aspects of the ACLS curriculum. ⋯ Students were tested using standard ACLS criteria. The students in the problem-based course achieved a higher pass rate on the written test and skills stations than senior medical students did in a standard two-day course during the same time period. The problem-based format with enhanced practice time would appear to be an effective alternative for groups that need to acquire the basic skills needed in a resuscitation attempt but have little previous experience in this area.