INTRODUCTION: Guideline deviations with impact on patient outcomes frequently occur during in-hospital cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR). However, barriers and facilitators for preventing these guideline deviations are understudied. We aimed to characterize challenges occurring during IHCA and identify barriers and facilitators perceived by actual team members immediately following IHCA events.

METHODS: This was a prospective multicenter clinical study. Following each resuscitation attempt in 6 hospitals over a 4-year period, we immediately sent web-based structured questionnaires to all responding team members, reporting their perceived resuscitation quality, teamwork, and communication and what they perceived as barriers or facilitators. Comments were analyzed using qualitative inductive thematic analysis methodology.

RESULTS: We identified 924 resuscitation attempts and 3,698 survey responses were collected including 2,095 qualitative comments (response rate: 65%). Most frequent challenges were overcrowding (27%) and poor ergonomics/choreography of people in the room (17%). Narrative comments aligned into 24 unique barrier and facilitator themes in 4 domains: 6 related to treatment (most prevalent: CPR, rhythm check, equipment), 7 for teamwork (most prevalent: role allocation, crowd control, collaboration with ward staff), 6 for leadership (most prevalent: visible and distinct leader, multiple leaders, leader experience), and 5 for communication (most prevalent: closed loops, atmosphere in room, speaking loud/clear).

CONCLUSION: Using novel, immediate after-event survey methodology of individual cardiac arrest team members, we characterized challenges and identified 24 themes within 4 domains that were barriers and facilitators for in-hospital resuscitation teams. We believe this level of detail is necessary to contextualize guidelines and training to facilitate high-quality resuscitation.