Education considerations
Context considerations
• When prioritising where to spend your money and effort, it is important to understand the cost and reach of different media outlets in your country.
• Carefully consider how to best reach your target audience. Some countries are oversaturated with media; therefore, selecting the timing, the key message and getting creative with your delivery method is important.
• Combine media messaging with other approaches to shape policies and practices in your area.
• First aid emergencies are covered daily in news media but do not always inform audiences of the relevant preventative actions or first aid steps (Pribble et al., 2008). Share informative images and soundbites with journalists who need content for a story.
Learner considerations
• Consider the population’s literacy level and select the appropriate media outlet that will best engage people. Consult the target audience on which media outlets they prefer to use.
Facilitation tips
• Have subject matter experts or spokespeople share specialised information with specific media channels (e.g., have a wilderness first aid expert provide tips to a publication or televised programme that focuses on the outdoors).
• Use testimonials from people who have seen or heard first aid media content and intend to change their behaviour because of it. This may encourage others to change too.
• Be creative when developing media content (e.g., use a song or fun facts to engage people).
• Include the target audience when developing key messages and media content to ensure it resonates with them and is culturally appropriate.
• Use stories that reflect your message and connect with your target audience.
• Measure educational outcomes by observing behavioural changes over time (e.g., the rate at which medical care was appropriately accessed or the number of people who provided first aid before accessing medical care).
• Avoid using media that you have not validated for accuracy as some YouTube videos and television commercials demonstrate first aid skills incorrectly or provide false information.
Benefits and limitations
• Media should not be used as a standalone educational strategy, but it can remind people how to respond in specific emergencies.
• Most media delivery methods require educational messages to be concise and may limit the amount of information that can be communicated.
• Media may be expensive to produce, especially at a high quality.
• It may be challenging to measure the media outlet’s effectiveness as an educational tool.
• There is no way of knowing if the published or broadcasted content reached the intended audience.
• There is little evidence that media content can be used to develop first aid skills effectively.
Scientific foundation
Our review looked into whether media exposure, compared to other learning methods, has an impact on the learner or person in need of care. There were many variables in the evidence, including the degree of media saturation, type and quality of media, measured outcomes and intervention aims. These variables
made it difficult to compare studies. Additionally, very few high-quality studies have been completed in this field and the available evidence varies significantly. This does not mean the available papers are poor quality, rather that more high-quality studies are needed to make a proper comparison.
We identified eight papers and included four in this review. The papers examined different media interventions and measured different outcomes.
1. The first paper covered the use of a 30-second public service broadcast and measured participants’
knowledge, awareness and intent to perform CPR on a stranger. The randomised experimental study included 384 participants. The intervention group demonstrated significantly more knowledge and awareness of the campaign than the control group. However, there was no difference in the intent to perform CPR (Meischke et al., 1999).
2. The second paper looked at a very brief video broadcast on closed-circuit televisions, shown to people in a hospital waiting room. The participants were then assessed on their skills and ability to perform CPR. One hundred participants took part in a non-randomised prospective controlled before-and-after study. The intervention group (who watched the video) showed a statistically significant improvement in perfect compression-only CPR, as well as in chest compression rate and depth. However, this study had several limitations: the intervention group was passively exposed to the video and there was no means of testing behaviour changes in a real emergency after the study (Benoit et al., 2017).
3. The third paper discussed a non-randomised observational study that looked at the use of public service announcements on broadcast television. The study examined medical records to measure the actual rates of bystander CPR and found a significant increase in the intervention group.
However, the study was weakened by the fact that the quality of CPR was not tested, and post- intervention data was not collected (Becker et al., 1999).
4. The final paper looked at a randomised controlled trial that took place over 18 months in 20 paired cities. The study used mixed media, including public service announcements and newspaper articles. It measured the outcomes of actual behaviour (from the time of symptom onset to arrival at the emergency department) and use of emergency medical services, as well as first aid knowledge, attitudes and beliefs. The results showed that there was no difference in statistical significance between the intervention and control groups in regard to actual behaviour. However, there was a significant increase in the appropriate use of emergency medical services in the intervention group.
There was also evidence of increased public awareness and knowledge of the programme’s messages, including the symptoms and appropriate first aid steps for a heart attack (Luepker et al., 2000).
We also identified additional literature specific to water safety education, an area that commonly uses a variety of media messaging formats. In their reviews of drowning prevention literature, Leavy, Crawford, and Leaversuch (2016) and Leavy, Crawford, and Portsmouth (2017) found that the learning outcomes from informational and educational campaigns varied. As such, they caution against relying on a campaign approach as a solitary strategy. They also noted the lack of insight on multi-approach strategies to water safety education as a gap in the available literature.
Additional information
• The effects of a media campaign may lessen once it is over (Eppler et al., 1994).
• Film and television often show incorrect first aid, which may contribute to common misconceptions.
For example, television will typically show a person spontaneously start to breathe again after a very short period of CPR. This may lead viewers to falsely believe that they only need to perform CPR for a short time before the person starts to breathe again (Alismail et al., 2018; Colwill et al., 2018).