3 Reasons Why CPR Should Be Taught in Schools
It is quite common in movies for a character to collapse and for someone in the crowd to conveniently have CPR training. In real life, however, this is hardly the case. In most situations, there is no dramatic loss of consciousness, and there probably won’t be a guy who steps in to save the day.
The good thing about this is CPR knowledge can be acquired if one wished to. If it’s potentially saving lives, why is there even a need to ask if it should be taught? And where else would be a better place to start than the place where teaching and learning is a daily job?
Majority of cardiac arrests happen outside the hospital
It is a rare case for a person to be lucky enough to actually collapse due to heart attack in front of the hospital—although it is frightening even when all you got to do is bring him into the emergency room and call a doctor for the medical team to take it from there.
If it isn’t in front of a hospital, it’s a completely different story. But it’s not going to be that scary particularly if you have enough people who undergone CPR training.
Let’s say you’re a CPR instructor, and you have 25 students in your class. Since it’s highly unlikely that the 25 of them are going to be together all the time, you’ve basically increased the probability that someone will be attending to a patient who’s experiencing a heart attack in the middle of the street. Sure, it’s a small number, but every single one of them counts. Doctors don’t have eyes everywhere, after all.
More people who know CPR means a bigger survival rate
Cardiac arrest, if not attended to as soon as possible, can cause death within just minutes. However, this doesn’t mean that it is inevitable. If a victim has 5 minutes before he becomes brain-dead and the ambulance is still 15 minutes away, with CPR, those 5 minutes can turn into 15. In this situation, CPR may be the patient’s only shot of ever walking, or breathing, again.
The survival rate of cardiac arrest is not high. In fact, it’s quite low, but that’s still much better than sudden death.
Knowledge of CPR doesn’t equate to the ability of preventing a patient’s death. Its survival rate is not high at all—if anything, it’s low. This, however, doesn’t mean that it’s pointless to learn. True, cardiac arrest patients survive less than half of half the time, but for every one person that learns CPR, the survival rate increases. It may be as small as the sand stuck on your feet compared to all the beaches in the world, but it’s there.
It allows the CPR-educated community to grow quickly
About a decade ago, you were a standout if you had a touchscreen phone. Now, you’re a standout if you have a keypad phone. If one person invests time or money into something, it’s an interest. If 1000 people do, it’s a trend. If it’s a million, it’s a standard.
Imagine the 5 classes you taught CPR to. In these 5 classes, a few would pass on their CPR knowledge as well. Sometime later, this particular cluster of schools has become well-versed in CPR. Add some more time later, and it’s the entire county. It’ll keep on growing until it isn’t normal to not be familiar with CPR.
And we all know that this is a good thing.
Key Takeaway
Cardiac arrest can happen to anyone at any time. This cannot be controlled, but it can definitely be dealt with. It is highly advisable for CPR trainings to be held at schools, as this could potentially save lives. Plus, it enables the steady growth of the number of people with CPR knowledge. Eventually, this will increase the survival rate over time.
