This Baby Knows CPR - How about you?

Why is it that CPR training has been mostly reserved for adults when we see story after story about kids who saved someone's life, often with only limited training? There seems to be an overwhelming opinion that CPR is complicated and difficult to learn, and that knowing the exact numbers and order of steps is required in order to do CPR on someone. This is a myth, and a very dangerous one at that.

One of our initiatives in the past couple of years has been to dispel this myth by teaching CPR to high school students for free. In doing this training, we are finding that kids make some of the best rescuers. This is because of their general lack of fear -- fear of lawsuits, of hurting the person, or of doing something wrong. Kids are overwhelmingly willing to do whatever they can to help when someone is in trouble, even if they don't know exactly what the "right way" is to help. And by giving high schoolers even a basic level of awareness training, they can be made much more confident and more effective in their rescue efforts if something happens when they are around.

Now, the way we are training students in CPR may surprise you. With our Student CPR program, students learn through online video training and testing. The teacher then has the option to conduct manikin sessions with the students so they can practice what they've learned. And the results of this program speak for themselves.

Just as babies learn from observing the world around them, well before they even learn to communicate, learning a skill like CPR can also be accomplished by observation. Students watch up-close video demonstrations and listen to an expert paramedic explain the theory behind the actions involved in CPR. By the end of the training, students find that they feel extremely confident in their ability to react in an emergency.

And this version of online or blended CPR training is not limited only to high school students. Doctors, nurses, dentists, factory workers, and everyone in between is transitioning to online CPR training as a logical alternative to classroom training. Try it for yourself and see if you feel as confident in your abilities as the baby in the video.

Would you be ready to do CPR if someone needed it? Have you ever been in a situation where you did need to perform CPR? Let us know in the comments below.