Cardiopulmonary resuscitation, popularly known as CPR, is a technique used to save lives not only by paramedics and medical professionals but also by people who have received CPR training. This is done in cases such as heart attacks or near drowning situations wherein the technique may prove extremely useful especially when the person’s breathing or heartbeat has already ceased.
It is therefore recommended that the general population – even bystanders – should be aware of this technique and get CPR training in order to enhance survival of patients who are minutes away from the hospital and need immediate resuscitation prior to the arrival of paramedics on site.
In the light of emergency events, it is better that you do something instead of nothing just because you’re afraid that your knowledge and skills are not adequate and complete. However, there is a big difference between “trying” to save someone’s life than looking and not doing anything at all. The “something” that you do may be the only thing that will save this person’s life. Isn’t it amazing to know that you were able to save someone despite not being confident of your resuscitating skills?
Now, if this is what motivates you, how about getting yourself a formal CPR training?
Here’s some basic information about CPR that you might be interested in knowing before you actually go on formal training:
- If you are an untrained person, the best approach would be hands-only CPR, which means you do continuous chest compressions that will go at about 100 per minute until the formally trained personnel arrive on scene. There is no need to do mouth-to-mouth resuscitation or “rescue breathing” in this scenario.
- If you have undergone training before and are confident that you can do the technique extremely well, you can start by doing chest compression instead of doing the SOP airway checking and do rescue breathing. Your chest compressions must go at about 30 compressions before you check the airway or do rescue breathing.
- If you have undergone training but is unsure if you still remembered the correct process, you can start immediately with 100 chest compressions per minute similar to when you are untrained.
You have to know, however, that the above advice must not be done to newborns since they have specialized technique of resuscitation meant only for them.
These are just basic information regarding CPR that you can expect on getting in detail during formal training. There are a lot of agencies or organizations that will help you understand the basics and will allow you to do hands-on training on dummy so that you will know whether what you learned is right.
These organizations or agencies will have training personnel who will assist you every step of the way from the very beginning of the workshop until you achieve confidence in your skills. These training personnel will help you understand the importance of CPR and why it can save life. So, if you have the strong sense of duty towards other people and those that matter to you, have yourself trained with CPR and save lives.
