Background A large number of sudden cardiac arrests occur annually, but the worldwide survival rate is less than 1%. Early initiation of bystander Cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) would improve the survival rate of out-of-hospital sudden cardiac arrests. Students play an important role as bystanders on and off campus both now and in the future. So we wanted to investigate the awareness and attitudes towards CPR of Chinese students, in order to improve the dissemination of bystander CPR in China.

Methods The survey was conducted by questionnaire in November 2007. We had chosen 3500 students from the city of Wuhan in China randomly according to the stratified cluster sampling technique.

Results There were 3248 questionnaires answered, and 2763 questionnaires were considered valid. Few respondents reported that they had heard (28%) and studied (27%) of CPR, and only 3% of the respondents had attended a CPR course. The two major sources of information about CPR for Chinese students were television and books. Most respondents expressed a desire to learn CPR (77%), and were willing to disseminate CPR (73%).

Conclusion Dissemination of CPR among Chinese students has not been executed satisfactorily. The finding highlights the importance of CPR dissemination and efforts should be made to provide more convenient, effective and attractive ways for the Chinese public, especially students, to learn CPR.