Background: Although bystanders' performance is important to improve outcomes of patients after cardiac arrests, few studies have investigated the barriers of bystanders, including those who could not perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation or any other rescue actions in emergency situations. This study aimed to assess the relationship between the psychological barriers of laypersons who encountered emergency situations and their rescue actions.Methods and Results:A questionnaire survey was conducted and this included laypersons who had encountered emergency situations during the last 5 years. Six questions were about the psychological barriers and 8 questions were about the laypersons' rescue actions. The primary outcome was any rescue actions performed by laypersons in an actual emergency situation. Overall, 7,827 (92.8%) of 8,430 laypersons responded; of them, 1,361 (16.1%) had encountered emergency situations during the last 5 years, and 1,220 (14.5%) were eligible for inclusion in the analyses. Of the 6 psychological barriers, "fear of approaching a collapsed person" (adjusted odds ratio [AOR] 0.50; 95% confidence interval [95% CI] 0.32-0.79) and "difficulties in judging whether to perform any rescue action" (AOR 0.63; 95% CI 0.40-0.99) were significantly associated with performing any rescue actions.
Conclusions: The fear of approaching a collapsed person and difficulties in judging whether to take any actions were identified as the psychological barriers in performing any rescue actions by laypersons who encountered emergency situations.
Keywords: Out-of-hospital cardiac arrest; Psychological barriers; Questionnaire survey; Rescue actions.