INNOVATION IN HEALTH: USING THE RESOURCES OF DISTANCE EDUCATION TO TEACH BASIC LIFE SUPPORT TO THE BRAZILIAN POPULATION

Cardiovascular diseases are the leading cause of death worldwide, and 80% of cases are caused specifically by heart attacks and strokes (WHO, 2016). Procedures that comprise Basic Life Support (BLS) increase the chances of survival and minimize the risk of consequences. With this in mind, a MOOC was developed for AVASUS, the open courses learning platform of the Brazilian Ministry of Health, to present the population the Basic Life Support actions recommended by the American Heart Association Guidelines (2015) for the care of victims of cardiorespiratory arrest, respiratory arrest and obstruction of airways by foreign body. This paper seeks to make an experience report about the course, which was built under the methodology of problem-based learning, with a short film that depicts a cardiorespiratory arrest situation of a typical Brazilian citizen who does not take the necessary precautions to avoid complications of an unhealthy lifestyle. In addition, there are another seventeen videos that teach techniques of responsiveness tests, chest compression, the operation of an Automatic External Defibrillator, disengagement of adults and babies, among other aspects. Animations with the functioning of the heart, infographics and texts in interactive pdfs with the content to be studied were also made. For the evaluation, objective questions, crosswords and a game were developed, all of them self-instructional, which means that the learning platform itself corrects and provides feedback to the students. It is hoped that this model can contribute to the massive education of the population in the area of public health and that it can be adapted to other institutions and countries, given the high rate of interest: in a month available, this MOOC had approximately 5,000 registrations on the AVASUS platform.