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Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Making it real

One of the problems encountered in trying to convince people that they ought to learn CPR is that many people think it's not relevant to them.

We keep looking for new ways to help people realize that cardiac arrests are realities that happen to people they know and that they might someday be the person who has the responsibility of keeping the heart and brain alive until the medics get there.

Here's one of the more recent suggestions.

"Write down a list of your family members, your friends, and your acquaintances. Divide the number of names on that list by 7 - that's the number of people on that list that will witness at least one sudden cardiac arrest in their lifetime.

"Now, look at that list of names. The odds are high that when you witness a sudden cardiac arrest, the victim will be someone from that list. When that happens, you will need to perform CPR and there has to be an AED nearby...or you will have to live with the remembrance that you could have made a large difference, if only you had invested an hour or so."

I'd really appreciate any suggestions you might have for how we can make this real to more people.