Words to live by, eh? That was the mantra I learned at a lecture given last year by a paramedic at the Rhode Island Medical Reserve Corp. He was reviewing the new standards for CPR. Recent evidence shows that more and harder compression gets more oxygen into the lungs and improves survival odds.
Health care workers renew their CPR certification every two years on average, and last time I took the class I got a perfect score on the test. But I’ll confess something. It makes me nervous.
I’m afraid I’ll forget something. I wonder how well I’d do in a real cardiac arrest. I don’t work in critical care, and I don’t get to practice. If I do CPR, it will probably be a real emergency on the street or in a home.
So any dumb memory aid I can grab onto I’ll use. Like the BeeGee’s song, ‘Stayin’ Alive’…
“You want the chest to go down about 2 inches. I weigh 160 pounds, and when I do this I put about half my weight into it,” he said. The pressure should be applied to the center of the chest, between the two nipples of the victim.
The compressions also have to come in rapid succession – about 100 per minute. According to Hazinski, one easy way to remember the rhythm is that it is roughly equivalent to the beat of the 1977 Bee Gees’ disco hit “Stayin’ Alive.”
A perfectly ironic choice for a CPR theme song.
The researchers, are taking into account the fear and stress well-meaning people feel when they’re not sure how to help…
Studies show that either mouth-to-mouth or hands-only CPR may double the survival rate from cardiac arrest, but bystanders typically step in to provide the potentially life-saving intervention in only about one-third of cases. That hesitation is rooted not only in reluctance to lock lips with a stranger, but by anxiety over how to perform conventional CPR, in which the rescuer breathes into the victim twice after every 30 chest compressions.
“Many times people nearby don’t help because they’re afraid that they will hurt the victim and aren’t real confident in what they’re doing,” said Michael Sayre, chairman of the Heart Association committee that rewrote the guidelines. In fact effective chest compression can break the victim’s ribs about one-third of the time. That’s a risk well worth taking when the odds of survival without CPR are so slim.
The Heart Association also stressed that three-quarters of sudden cardiac arrest cases outside the hospital occur in the home. The bystander who needs to provide those chest compressions is often a loved one of the victim. [full story here]
This is not April Fools. All you loving folk can learn CPR, and the new standards make it easier.
Kmareka.com 
Joe Polisena, mayor of Johnston, taught the last CPR class I took. I jokingly suggested to him that there should be a tax credit for people who get trained in CPR. But maybe it’s not such a bad idea after all. Right up there with my breastfeeding tax credit idea.
Oh, it’s about CPR?! Well, it caught my attention, anyway. Good job, NG.
The part that really freaks me out is the possibility of delivering CPR to a small child or infant. I recently took a CPR recert and worked with that tiny doll, and it was a bit unnerving at first. I was worried I’d blow the poor thing’s lung’s out! I had a good trainer, though, and eventually I got the idea.
Even though I hope I never have to do it, I’m more confident now that I could if I had to.
Thanks for publicizing this issue, Nancy.
it would be a great idea to teach cpr to all high school students in health class. ever since they cancelled ‘rescue 911’ there’s no way for kids to pick it up.
I agree, all schools should be taught it. I went for teaching when in a High School program and it was a requirement to take CPR and First Aid.
I have kept up with the training and added the new defibraltor to the regime of saving lives. I too have this fear of something going terribly wrong and forgetting…especially when it comes to one of your own kids.
Interesting to note, that if you have your Certification Card, you are immune from lawsuits should you break someone’s rib…or not revive the person, the person’s family can’t sue you. RI is one of the few states that gives this immunity to cardholders. Seeing how people unethically abuse the system, it is no wonder that some people are hesitant to get involved for fear of being sued.
Most of you are so WHAT, not me…I would jump right in and work regardless of the get=out=of=jail card, but the fact remains there are many I’ve talked to that say they would just call for help and not go beyond it too much.
I like the idea of teaching it in school! Nice article.