Today’s Class: Saving a Life

Research project teaches middle school students CPR basics in 20 minutes

Learning life-saving techniques—Marna Greenberg, D.O., and seventh-grader Sage use CPR Anytime to practice chest compressions. Sage and her fellow Salisbury Middle School students used the kits to learn key CPR skills and teach their parents.Amidst the activities at Salisbury

Middle School’s Family Fun Day, Marna Greenberg, D.O., knelt with students and their parents to teach a valuable lesson—the importance of knowing CPR.

As part of a Lehigh Valley Hospital and Health Network research project, Greenberg and her emergency medicine colleagues distributed more than 180 take-home CPR education kits to the school’s seventh-graders in September. At Family Fun Day, Greenberg and her colleagues followed up to help the children show their parents tips that could save a life.

“Most school districts teach CPR in middle school, but many of their parents need basic CPR skills too,” Greenberg says. “These kits gave us a great tool to teach the students and engage their parents and siblings.”

Called CPR Anytime, the kits include an instructional booklet, DVD and an inflatable training dummy that teach the basics of CPR in about 20 minutes. “You won’t be fully certified,” Greenberg says. “But you’ll learn important techniques like proper chest compressions.”

To help people throughout our community learn these techniques, hospital colleagues are giving CPR Anytime to emergency patients selected at random, and new and expectant mothers. The goal: to see if this program helps to reduce the incidence of sudden cardiac death. CPR Anytime also is available to the general public at the LVH–Cedar Crest and LVH–Muhlenberg Health Spectrum Pharmacies. The trials are soon drawing to a conclusion; Greenberg hopes to have results by early next year.

Inside Salisbury Middle School, Greenberg can see some early results. “Teens often find it difficult to open up to their parents, but here teens, parents and siblings are talking it up and learning a most valuable skill,” Greenberg says. “It’s clear we’re getting this life-saving message across.”

Hands-Only CPR
Just one in four people who suffer heart attacks receives bystander CPR. As a result, the average survival rate is only about 6 percent. “Any CPR is better than no CPR,” Greenberg says.

To help raise awareness of CPR, the American Heart Association (AHA) recently launched a Hands-Only CPR campaign. It encourages bystanders to call 9-1-1 and start immediate compressions in the center of the chest if they are untrained (or hesitant to provide mouth-to-mouth).

“The AHA still recommends you learn conventional CPR,” Greenberg says. “But if you’re untrained, don’t be afraid to use Hands-Only CPR. It could save a life.”

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