“You can also save a life!”: children’s drawings as a non-verbal assessment of the impact of cardiopulmonary resuscitation training

Drawings made by training children into cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) during the special education week called “School otherwise” can be used as non-verbal means of expression and communication to assess the impact of such training. We analyzed the questionnaires and drawings completed by 327 schoolchildren in different stages of education. After a brief overview of the basic life support (BLS) steps and after watching a video presenting the dynamic performance of the BLS sequence, subjects were asked to complete a questionnaire and make a drawing to express main CPR messages. Questionnaires were filled completely in 97.6 % and drawings were done in 90.2 % cases. Half of the subjects had already witnessed a kind of medical emergency and 96.94 % knew the correct “112” emergency phone number. The drawings were single images (83.81 %) and less cartoon strips (16.18 %). Main themes of the slogans were “Save a life!”, “Help!”, “Call 112!”, “Do not be indifferent/insensible/apathic!” through the use of drawings interpretation, CPR trainers can use art as a way to build a better relation with schoolchildren, to connect to their thoughts and feelings and obtain the highest quality education