Cardiopulmonary resuscitation: an essential skill not only for junior doctors but medical undergraduates and para medical staff.

Basic life support (BLS) and even advanced cardiac life support (ACLS) should be an integral and mandatory component of the undergraduate curriculum in all local medical schools’, perhaps for students in their penultimate or final year. Refresher courses and periodic mandatory recertification however is necessary to avoid de-skilling. Simply increasing the period of housemanship training alone is insufficient without the appropriate training and supervision, a problem likely to be exacerbated in the future by a glut of housemen and inadequate training posts.