February is National Heart Month...
Cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) is a life saving skill that should be on everyone’s resume, and Albany County is celebrating American Heart Month by holding classes to teach the skill throughout February.
CPR Anytime is an “all-in-one” learning kit that teaches the basic skills of CPR, Available in Adult/Child or Infant Programs
Working to raise awareness of an easy-to-learn technique, hands-only CPR that can be used in instances of cardiac arrest and can be taught in less than 5 minutes. CPR Anytime classes run by Colonie EMS will be offered throughout February at various locations.
During the announcement for the trainings this month, hundreds of students at Shaker High School in Latham learned last week from Colonie EMS personnel, as part of an effort led by the American Heart Association to train all high school students.
Roughly 300,000 sudden cardiac arrests occur in the U.S. each year, with a survival rate of just 9 percent. In Colonie, where Colonie EMS Chief Peter Berry has made it a goal to train as many people as possible in CPR, that rate is 34 percent. Colonie EMS have provided CPR training to more than 2,000 town employees, firefighters, students, seniors and other community members in the past three years. These actions have put Colonie on the map as one of two locations in the country to win the Heart Safe Community Award from the International Association of Fire Chiefs in 2010.
The course will teach participants how to use an automated external defibrillator. Participants use mannequins provided by Colonie EMS to practice compression.
“We know that CPR saves lives,” said Albany County Sheriff Craig Apple. “Our EMS personnel have much greater success when they arrive on a scene and CPR has been started. If it hasn’t been started, the outcome is almost always tragic.”
“Teaching hands-free CPR will save more lives and provide better outcomes for the survivors,” said Michelle Haller, who survived a sudden cardiac arrest in 2009 because of immediate CPR response. “It’s easy to perform and gives people the tool to save a life, most likely someone they know.
“CPR is the first link in the chain of survival,” Haller said. Aware of her fortune, “If there isn’t anyone that starts CPR, the chances of someone surviving a cardiac arrest are almost zero.”
“People are very eager to learn it,” said Jared Alpern, a first responder for Clifton Park and Halfmoon EMS. Alpern, 17, is also a student at Shaker High School. He stressed the importance of being knowledgeable in how to perform CPR for the first minutes or cardiac arrest before an ambulance arrives to the scene.
For every minute that a person undergoing cardiac arrest does not receive CPR, their chance of survival decreases by 10 percent, Alpern said.
“The rate of survival is dependent on the number of people in the community who know CPR,” Haller said.
