(soft music)
(cardiograph beeps)
(cardiograph flatline)
King County actually
has one of the highest cardiac arrest survival rates in the entire world,
and a big part of that is because so many bystanders are trained in CPR.
- I've been in situations where I've, you know, wished
that I knew more about CPR.
- Have you ever come across a situation where you ...?
Yeah, yeah.
A couple months ago.
- CPR is a lifesaving skill,
and Seattle’s ahead of the game.
A heart attack,
The easiest wat to put it is a circulation problem,
and think about cardiac arrest as an electrical problem.
That's when we do CPR.
They’re sudden, they can’t, they’re unconscious,
They're unresponsive, They’re not breathing.
One of medic 2’s goals is removing as many barriers as possible for people
to learn CPR and have that critical skill and potentially save lives.
So we don't do pulse checks anymore.
But what we do is we call them out. Hey, are you okay?
They don’t respond, I feel safe, I can,
Hey, are you okay?
- We've taught community CPR classes here at Seattle Fire Department headquarters
for years, but recently we've built this partnership
with Seattle Parks and Recreation.
What we want your heart to do,
is kind of this, like boom, boom. Boom, boom.
That's great.
We call that a normal sinus rhythm.
And we love this.
Seattle Fire reached out to us, which was amazing, being proactive
and just said, hey, we have an opportunity to offer free
CPR classes to the community.
It just made sense to do them in the community centers
because these are the the binding hubs for our neighborhoods in Seattle.
And, this is helping us get to more people, to underserved communities,
to people who, populations who never were able to
maybe have the,
find the chance to learn how to get certified, to help them.
- It was an easy, like, ten minute drive for me, and it looks like they're
put on pretty much like every other week or something like that, so ...
My shoulders in line with the chest,
my head over ...
- It was easy, it was convenient,
and it was free.
- If you would like a CPR certification card for any reason, it does cost $30.
But we also offer that class for free.
If you don't want to receive a certification card.
So say you just want the skills
You can come and take the class and not pay anything.
We have a couple ways to find the center of the chest.
One way is if you go kind of this low part.
If evryone can do this, with two fingers.
You see this soft part, this soft part right here?
Kind of under your chest,
two fingers up, that's where we want to do CPR.
Not on the left side,
right side, right in the middle.
We have two different options for classes.
We do a hands on CPR class
So you're learning basically compression, only CPR.
How to use an AED and then actually performing CPR.
- (AED machine) Place the pad firmly on skin.
We also teach an adult child an infant CPR certification class,
you're learning, CPR, how to use an AED.
- And now flip. - This way?
- Yes.
- Choking intervention techniques.
- And then I'm going to stabilize with this hand.
- On adult, children, and infants.
In all of our classes, you're going to learn about what to look out for.
Agonal breathing is a reflex of your brain stem, and it's a sign of death.
And so it can sound like a couple different things,
but most of what it sounds like is,
(choking sound)
that sort of sound.
So if someone goes unconscious, how to tell if they're breathing or not,
and how to tell if their heart is beating or not,
and then when to step in and actually start performing CPR.
- You're going to do 30 compressions, 2 breaths,
just enough to see the chest rise.
- Certification classes also include rescue breaths.
- For infants, we're going to start
with two breaths.
- Sometimes you feel intimidated doing it.
But it seemed to go really well.
- We got people coming in for different reasons.
- I'm a personal trainer,
and so it’s a job requirement.
I also work security in Fremont at a venue,
And also just for the betterment of humanity.
- Most people I would say, want to learn to save a life.
Okay, clear, clear, clear.
- No one wants to think about this happening, but it's a possibility.
Actually, more than 70% of out-of-hospital cardiac arrests happen at home.
- Besides wanting to be up to date on everything,
I also take care of an elderly.
Aunt I have young children that live next door
that I take care of occasionally.
So I felt I needed to know what to do.
- You knowing what to do to step in to help that loved one
can be the difference between them living or dying.
- I work in the field like in the wilderness sometimes.
And so this person was, they were choking and I had, like, wilderness first aid
and everybody's
kind of freaking out, you know, if I have to step into a situation
like that in the future,
I think I’ll be a little bit calmer and a little bit sure of what's going on.
- We want to save lives.
We want eventually the idea that,
I know it's hard but, everyone in Seattle can do CPR.
That would be amazing.
(cardiograph flatline returns to beeps)
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