AMR Continues Quest to Save Lives With “Hands Only” CPR Coaching

by ECT Sep 21, 2013

written by ECT Sep 21, 2013

The American Medical Response (AMR) team will be at three community events this weekend as they continue offering free “hands only” CPR coaching for the public in an effort to save more lives while educating the community on first response.

AMR is the contracted 9-1-1 Paramedic Ambulance provider for approximately 90% of Contra Costa County. They are also an active health education and injury prevention community partner.

“We are dedicated to community education programs that focus on prevention, healthy lifestyle promotion and early intervention of medical emergencies,” says Iris I. Villegas, Community Outreach Coordinator of American Medical Response.

It is vital for people to be trained in CPR because sudden cardiac arrest continues to be the leading cause of death in the United States, according to Villegas. Nearly 400,000 out-of-hospital cardiac arrests occur annually in the United States. When someone has a sudden cardiac arrest, survival depends on immediately getting CPR from someone nearby. Sadly, 89% of people who suffer an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest die because they don’t receive immediate CPR from someone on the scene.

AMR is active in the community and offers free training in their pursuit to continue to spread the awareness of the new Hands-Only CPR method. “This is CPR without the rescue breathing and it is backed up by studies conducted by the American Heart Association,” says Villegas.

So far, AMR has a “total of 2,398 trained citizens and hope to add many more with this weekend events,” says Villegas.

In fact, back in May, AMR set out to break a world record by training as many people as possible in a single 24-hour window of time across the country–Nationwide, they trained 51,000 people while training 570 people in Contra Costa County at three locations, including the Streets of Brentwood where 151 were trained.

“We know from local Cardiac Arrest data and national American Heart Association research that early 911 access and immediate bystander CPR provides the non-breathing and pulseless patient the best opportunity for survival. Through our partnership in the communities donating AED’s to large public locations and schools together training people “Hands only CPR” lives are being saved and people are returning home to share with their families in birthdays, weddings graduations, etc. With the citizens engagement in caring for one another we are cancelling a lot of funerals,” explained Leslie Mueller Central Manager of American Medical Response for Contra Costa County.

“Last weekend we trained over 200 adults and kids from Hidden Valley Elementary School in Martinez during their annual Back to School Safety Day BBQ,” says Villegas.

Hands Only CPR has 3 simple steps:

CHECK the victim
CALL 911
CARE, by pushing hard and fast in the center of the chest at a rate of 100 compressions per minute. Kids can also get trained on these 3 simple steps.

The events this weekend include The African American Health Expo (Saturday at Pittsburg High School from 10:00 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.), The Lafayette Art, Wine and Music Festival (Saturday and Sunday in Downtown Lafayette from 10:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. on Saturday and 6:00 p.m. on Sunday) and the City Safety Day (Saturday at El Cerrito Plaza from 11:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.).