Prosocial Behaviour- A Major Determinant of Helping People in Health Emergency

Prosocial behaviour refers to the behaviours that benefit people (Penner, Dovidio, Piliavin, & Schroder, 2005). Prosocial behaviours are performed to benefit others, rather than to benefit the self. Typically, pro-social behaviors are an outgrowth of positive experiences and emotions (Aydinli et al, 2013). Feelings of empathy, compassion, and sympathy are also associated with helping, particularly when individuals recognize a moral obligation to care for others. According to World Health Organization, Pro-social behavior can emerge, however, from traumatic and painful experiences.

Cardiac arrest is a major public health issue, with more than 500000 deaths of children and adults per year even in developed countries. Despite significant scientific advances in care of cardiac arrest victims, there remain striking disparities in survival rates for both in-hospital and out-of-hospital cardiac arrest. It is seen that survival can vary among geographic regions by as much as 6-fold for victims in pre-hospital setting. For out of hospital cardiac arrest victims, the key determinants of survival are the timely performance of first responder or bystander cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and defibrillation for those in ventricular fibrillation and pulse less ventricular tachycardia. Only a minority of cardiac arrest victims receive potentially lifesaving bystander CPR, thus indicating that there should be some hindrances for the first responders from the general public to perform this in the right time (Bhanji et al, 2015).