Southbridge, MA – Harrington HealthCare System’s has announced that its training center coordinator, Jon Gorman, RN, BSN and the Harrington team will again be offering Hands-Only CPR training to attendees of the Eastern States Exposition Fair (The Big E) on the front lawn of the Massachusetts State Exposition Building on Massachusetts Day, Thursday, September 21.
This is the second year Gorman will teach Hands-Only CPR, that is, CPR without mouth-to-mouth breaths, at the Massachusetts Day celebration at the Big E. “We try to make it something quick and easy that people shouldn’t be afraid of,” said Gorman. “We have manikins for people to practice on, and last year we wound up training more than 750 people!”
“What was so incredible, though, was what happened after. We got a call informing us that three different people at the event had gone into cardiac arrest on-site. When the EMS arrived at each of those three scenes, members of the public were there with the victims doing chest compressions,” Gorman added. “Incredibly, people who had been by our tent and learned chest compressions were able to put their skills to use to save a life that very same day.”
According to the American Heart Association, Hands-Only CPR is recommended for use by people who see a teen or adult suddenly collapse in an “out-of-hospital” setting such as at home, at work or in a park. It consists of two easy steps: 1. Call 9-1-1 (or send someone to do that); 2. Push hard and fast in the center of the chest. Hands-Only CPR performed by a bystander has been shown to be as effective as conventional CPR (CPR that includes breaths) in the first few minutes of an out-of-hospital sudden cardiac arrest.
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