Study design
This was a cross-sectional multicenter study. Hospitals were selected by random sampling in 6 administrative regions separately. In China, Hospitals are classified by the National Health and Family Planning Commission of the People’s Republic of China as follows: Level III hospitals refer to medical centers or tertiary hospitals that have independent emergency departments (EDs) and are also teaching hospitals; Level II hospitals are regional hospitals which have independent EDs but are not teaching hospitals; and Level I hospitals, also called community hospitals, do not have EDs. Only level III hospitals were selected in an attempt to target providers likely to care for CA patients. First of all we screened all level III hospitals in one administrative region. The hospitals were coded randomly by SPSS and then were arranged in ascending order in each administrative region. Top 20% hospitals were enrolled in the study. The alternative hospitals were considered if the hospital was inaccessible or refused to participate (in ascending order). Finally 75 hospitals were included. The distribution of hospitals was shown in figure 1. Then we conducted a questionnaire survey for all emergency physicians of selected hospitals. Informed consent was obtained from all participants.
The questionnaire was developed by a senior emergency physician and discussed 3 times by an expert team which consists of emergency specialists experienced in the management of resuscitated patients, neurologists, and epidemiologist, working on rephrasing and improvement. Briefly, the questionnaire includes three parts: (1) Background data of the respondent; (2) The awareness of neurological prognosis (3) The practice of neurological evaluation. The questionnaires were distributed to the respondents from January to March 2018. Data collection ended in July 2018. The study protocol was approved by Peking university third hospital.