BOISE, IDAHO — The Seattle-based Resuscitation Academy came to Boise for the first time to teach a two-day class on High-Performance CPR for the area's CPR trainers.
- The Resuscitation Academy is a program helping trainers improve their ability to teach CPR
- For the first time, the academy came to Boise for a two-day event
- The event will help Southern Idaho's trainers learn to teach High-Performance CPR, which focuses on teamwork
(Below is the transcript from the broadcast story)
This week, the Seattle Resuscitation Academy made a two-day visit to Boise to help make CPR training in Idaho more efficient.
"This is the first ever academy that's been hosted in the Idaho area. So what we're trying to become is a lighthouse community to get all of that research and science and education, and then push that out to all the local agencies and local communities in the Southern Idaho area and further," said Ada County Paramedics EMS Training Captain Steven Seoane.
An important mission put on by an institute you may have never heard of.
"The Academy's goal is high-quality CPR, whether it be pre-hospital, which is late providers all the way through making sure when our personnel, when they show up on scene, do the absolute best care they can when it comes to CPR and defibrillation," said Boise Fire Senior Training Captain Kurt Freeman.
In a way, it's a type of trickle-down effect but in the most positive and beneficial way.
"We're training these individuals to be trainers in their own departments. So they'll take the training they learned here, go back, and they'll train their people what they've learned, and try and put together these high-performance CPR key points into their response to try and streamline what they do in their home agencies," said Freeman.
You may be asking if this is just a refresher course for individuals who should already know CPR. They're actually being taught about high-performance CPR as a team.
"The difference is CPR is a step-by-step approach to try and keep organs in the body perfused while the heart is not beating until we get advanced care there. High-performance CPR is a choreographed process, so when we show up as providers, everybody already knows their job, they know exactly which role they're going to fall into, there's less delays, and the more that we can continue to do chest compressions and good ventilations and defibrillation, the better the chance for a patient to survive," said Freeman.
And that's something local first-responders believe will benefit the entire area.
"We strongly believe that this will have a major effect on the outcome of survival statistics," said Seoane.
With better-trained CPR instructors out there, and more of them, it's important to remember who should be learning how to perform CPR in our communities.
"Everybody should know CPR. Everybody who is capable," said Seoane.
"Everyone should know CPR and be willing to get out there and at least start chest compressions when that phone call is made," said Freeman.
"What we're trying to do is extend our community outreach, not only to high schoolers but to beyond that as well," said Seoane.
"Most of the time, trained providers like myself won't be on scene when that cardiac arrest happens, it's going to be a spouse, it's going to be one of their children," said Freeman.
"So they can best benefit not only their family but also their community and their fellow citizens," said Seoane.
"And if they know CPR, they can make that phone call to get help coming and start compression, you greatly increase your chances of an individual surviving a cardiac arrest event," said Freeman.
