To understand the current status of knowledge, attitudes and behavioral cognition of self-rescue and mutual rescue among residents in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, and to explore effective ways for on-site self-rescue and mutual rescue training.

A total of 528 residents from 5 communities in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province were randomly selected to conduct an anonymous questionnaire survey from January 2020 to April 2020, including the current situation of community residents’ self-help and mutual aid popularization satisfaction, the way to acquire the skills of self-help and mutual aid, and the cognition of self-help and mutual aid. SPSS 23.0 was used to statistically analyze the current status of community residents’ attitudes, knowledge and behavior towards self-help and mutual rescue on the spot.

Most of the community residents were satisfied with the current status of on-site self-help and mutual rescue knowledge and skills in China, and 11.5% of the residents were still dissatisfied. Residents had various ways to accept on-site self-help and mutual aid knowledge, among which the new media had the largest proportion, accounting for 37.88%. In the on-site survey on the reasons for the difficulty in popularizing self-help and mutual-aid knowledge, residents had the largest percentage of poor learning initiative, at 33.47%, followed by the society ’s lack of attention to 28.76%, the lack of attractive training methods, 21.32%, and the lack of access to 16.45%. Most residents were able to master the basic knowledge of cardiopulmonary resuscitation, but the use of automatic external defibrillators, the treatment of thighs after dabbing, the on-site treatment of sprained feet and other basic knowledge of self-help and mutual rescue needed to be improved. Angina treatment, stroke treatment and convulsions treatment did not show a high proportion, 41.10%, 44.13%, and 40.53%, respectively. 62.69% of the residents wished to receive CPR self-help mutual rescue training.

Community residents are more optimistic about the status of self-help and mutual rescue on site. Apart from cardiopulmonary resuscitation, other self-rescue mutual rescue knowledge and on-site processing skills need to be improved. New media methods with the most channels for residents can be adopted for publicity and training to improve the community the ability of residents to save themselves on the spot.