How to Save a Life: CPR is Easier Than You Think

As part of my duties as a certified athletic therapist, I am required to be up to date on my Sports First Responder certification.  Although quite time consuming, it's actually quite beneficial as you realize just how much of your emergency care management skills need some tuning up.

Going a lot further than your basic CPR course, the Sports First Responder certification puts you in a situation where you are able to perform CPR, manage an airway, use a defibrillator, manage choking, administer oxygen and an epi-pen, treat a patient for shock, manage a stroke or cardiac infarction, control and manage a severe bleed, burn or fracture, and immobilize and board a person with a suspected spinal on to a spinal board while reducing further injury.  Your Be Training specialist is a Sports First Responder.

The actual inspiration behind this blog entry  has to do with this very disturbing fact.  I had asked Gary, one of the EMTs giving the course, how many times he had to use a defibrillator in his 30 year career and how many people he managed to save with it.

His answer was that he had used it maybe 300 or 400 times and saved only about 5 or 6 people.  The only reason there was such a low rate of survival was because during the time that people waited for the ambulance, nothing was being done for the patient.  After 20 minutes of cardiac arrest and oxygen deprivation, it is pretty hard for a person to be resuscitated successfully.

So I will leave you with this.  Even if you don't know CPR, just do something - anything - while waiting for the ambulance.  Here are a few very basic tips for those who need a refresher (as I did) and for those who are new to CPR:

• You administer CPR when you have a choking victim that became unconscious or you have a victim who does not have a pulse (heart beat).  Practice finding your pulse either at your neck (right below the jaw) or at your wrist (right where your thumb starts).  Use your friends for practice as well that way you know what you're looking for in a real situation.

• To check for breathing, just bring your cheek close to the victim's face and look for a raise and fall in his chest.

• Place one hand on top of the other on the patient's chest right between the nipple line, keep your elbows locked and use your body to compress the person's chest at least 2 inches deep.  Perform 30 compressions.  The rhythm should be about 1 compression per second.  Or just hum and follow the beat: "Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Stayin' alive, stayin' alive, oh oh oh oh oh stayin' alive, stayin' alive..."

• Next, you give 2 breaths.  Place one hand on the victim's forehead and the other hand on the his chin.  Tilt the head back while opening his mouth.  While giving the breaths make sure to see that the victim's chest is rising with each breath.  Caution!! You are not blowing up a balloon.  Breathe slowly, into the person's mouth for just a couple of seconds.

• Continue with your 30 compressions, and again give 2 breaths.

• Do this for 5 minutes and check the pulse again.  If it is absent, switch with somebody if you have help. But continue on for another 5 minutes cycle before checking the pulse again. 

• Stop if the victim wakes up.

• If you find a pulse and the breathing returns, roll the person over onto their left side with their head resting on their left arm.

• Hopefully the ambulance has arrived by that time.

 Doing something is better than nothing at all.

- Sherry Shaban