In an unfortunate incident, Damar Hamlin of the Buffalo Bills collapsed on the field after a tackle and became a victim of cardiac arrest. Although this type of incident is considered very rare, it does bring to everyone’s attention the importance of providing high quality CPR immediately when someone is in cardiac arrest. In these situations, the victim needs to receive CPR and AED within the first few minutes for the best chance of survival. Out-of-hospital survival rate is at about 10% and the average response time for paramedics or EMTs can be more than 10 minutes reported by several agencies, and this is due to the lack of administrating CPR and using an AED within the first few minutes. Paramedics and EMTs positions have experienced shortages, and partly due to COVID-19. For these reasons here at SAFE AND HEALTHY EDUCATION we feel it is important that everyone able to should participate in a First Aid CPR AED course in preparation for a first aid or cardiac arrest emergency if needed.
We train and certify health care workers, employees of manufacturing and retail organizations, educators, health aides, administrators, counselors and the general public in First Aid CPR AED and provide various other certifications. When writing this, we still are unclear whether or not Mr. Hamlin is going to survive. What we do know is had he not received CPR AED within the first few minutes his chance of survival would have been significantly less. We send him and his family our utmost well wishes.
Monica V Grezzi, certified AHA-CPR instructor
Easthampton