Purpose: Successful resuscitation and early defibrillation are critical in survival after in- or out-of-hospital cardiopulmonary arrest. This study aimed to determine the knowledge, skills, and attitudes of the pediatric healthcare professionals about the defibrillator use and to offer solutions if there was room for improvement. Procedures: This was a multicenter survey study. Findings: The study included 716 healthcare professionals with an average age of 30.1 ± 5.8 years; 50% (n=358) were pediatric residents and 41.3% (n=296) had less than three years of professional experience. Self-declared level of knowledge about defibrillation/cardioversion was low-to-medium for 66.5% (n=476); 60.8% (n=435) had never practiced these procedures and 22.2% (n=159) had never received any training about defibrillator use. There was a significant relationship between professional experience and the proportion of participants who correctly responded to the first-shock dose for defibrillation but not for cardioversion. Conclusion: Professional experience is crucial in the correct defibrillator use. However, the defibrillation/cardioversion procedures are prone to errors since they are not commonly applied in day to day practice. An ideal approach to improve the experience of personnel could be to use practical training with case-based simulations and to educate the personnel about the features of the defibrillators available in their clinics.

Aim: A pandemic is an epidemic of an infectious disease that has spread across a large region of the world and affects many people. In this study, it was aimed to evaluate the impact of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic on ambulance use by pediatric patients in ……………., Turkey. Materials and Methods: This retrospective study was conducted in the spring-summer of 2019 and 2020. The electronic medical records of pediatric patients who were transported to the hospital by ambulance were analyzed. Results: It was determined that 49.6% of the 23,201 patients included in the study were transported during the pandemic period. Male gender was higher in both the pandemic and pre-pandemic periods, there was no difference in terms of average age. The rate of forensic cases and refugee patients increased, while that of emergency patients decreased. Both the arrival at the scene time and intervention time were prolonged. Medical cause was the most common cause of emergency calls in both years, however, it increased significantly in 2020. The decrease in cases of traffic accidents, suicides, and other accidents was statistically significant. In the pandemic period, total rate of COVID-19 infection and suspicion was 29.7%. Most of the patients had been referred to a public hospital. Conclusion: It was found that most of the ambulances were used for transporting patients with minor illnesses that did not require immediate medical attention.