ArticleEmergency medicine journal : EMJ2025
Diversity of CPR manikins for basic life support education: use of manikin sex, race and body shape - a scoping review.
Article in Emergency medicine journal : EMJ, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 11 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
11 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- 2025 Korean Guidelines for Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation: Part 10. Education and system implementation for enhanced chain of survival.Clinical and experimental emergency medicine · 2026Guideline
- When Bystanders Skip CPR: Insights from a Retrospective Study.Medicina (Kaunas, Lithuania) · 2026Article
- Representation of female and male pictorial instructions on automated external defibrillators, pad packages, and defibrillation pads.Resuscitation plus · 2026Article
- Automated External Defibrillator pad placement pictograms in Japan: sex representation in publicly available product information.Resuscitation plus · 2026Article
- Rethinking CPR training: when the "man" in manikin affects performance, a randomized crossover simulation study.Resuscitation plus · 2026Article
- Targeted solutions to bridge the gap between sexes in the use of automated external defibrillators.Resuscitation plus · 2026Article
- Assessment of knowledge and awareness of cardiopulmonary resuscitation and heart attack symptoms amongst medical students in Syria - a cross-sectional study.BMC medical education · 2026Article
- Knowledge and attitudes toward cardiopulmonary resuscitation on women in Arab countries: An international cross-sectional survey study.Resuscitation plus · 2026Article
- Medical Student Perspectives on Female Anatomical Representation in CPR Training.Advances in medical education and practice · 2026Article
- CPR manikin diversity for BLS education: Current status mapped by an international cross-sectional survey and steps to reach health equity.Resuscitation plus · 2025Article
- CPR emojis and stickers - Additional pieces of the BLS awareness puzzle.Resuscitation plus · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
16 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundCardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) manikins typically appear white, lean and male. However, internationally, this does not represent the overall population or those who are at greatest risk of cardiac arrest. Diverse demographic groups including people of colour, women and obese people are known to be less likely to receive bystander CPR, public access defibrillation and suffer less favourable outcomes. It is plausible that failure to represent women, racially diverse and non-lean manikins can contribute to poor clinical outcomes in these populations. The aim of this scoping review was to summarise the current evidence for adaptations of manikins used for layperson Basic Life Support (BLS) training.
methodsWe searched MEDLINE, Embase, PsycINFO, CINAHL, ERIC, Web of Science, Infromit, Scopus and Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials to identify all empirical studies describing or evaluating CPR manikin diversity. Data on participant characteristics, manikin adaptations, study design, and key findings of included studies describing or evaluating CPR manikin diversity were extracted.
resultsInitially, 2719 studies were identified, and 15 studies were finally included and were grouped into (1) studies analysing adaptions of 'standard' manikins used in training (n=11) and (2) studies evaluating CPR manikin diversity used for online learning and on social media (n=4). Six of the studies analysing different adaptations reported the influence of the manikins' sex on comfort in performing CPR, quality of chest compression, automated external defibrillator use and removing clothes; four the effects of obese manikins; and one an ethnically diverse manikin. Seven of the studies used do-it-yourself adaptions. Racial and gender diversity of CPR manikins found in educational videos was limited, with only 5% of educational videos featuring non-white manikins and 1% featuring female manikins.
conclusionAdaptations of manikins used for BLS CPR training for laypersons still do not represent the diversity of communities most people are living in, internationally. There are hints that using diverse racial manikins has the potential to improve engagement in CPR training. Reported barriers hindering the use of adapted manikins were high costs and availability of these manikins.
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