Why learn CPR?

It’s agreed that we cannot all be doctors or paramedics, and in an emergency situation we give preference to medical personnel who are trained and are equipped to handle such incidents. However, the very definition of an emergency implies an urgency in which time is of the highest priority, and every second without medical assistance is perilous to the patient. In these circumstances, it becomes imperative that all efforts be taken to save the persons life. The most valuable service that each of us as lay persons, as community members, and as responsible human beings can provide is the study and practice of CPR and Basic Life Support. CPR or Cardio-Pulmonary Resuscitation is the application of trained maneuvers designed specifically to aid the vital functions of our body. The basic forces that support life in each of us are the normal involuntary functioning of our heart and lungs. We aren't continually aware of them until it's apparent that there is a problem. When our ability to respire, or take in oxygen and expel carbon dioxide suffers, our body goes in to an alarm or shock stage. Our lungs may cease to inflate, our heart may stop its regular beating, and we come to be in a state known as distress. This distress occurs at three separate levels, namely Airway, Breathing, and Circulation, or the ABC's of Life Support. If the airway is obstructed, the lungs are without oxygen, and the heart starts to skip or stop its normal rhythmic beating. Uncorrected, death is imminent. Practice of CPR specifically targets these vital components and attempts to rejuvenate our lungs and heart from a distress state to a safe or non-distress condition, while we wait for emergency personnel to arrive at the scene. CPR and Basic Life Support is certainly not the highest level of care afforded to a person in physical distress. However, it is the support that we can afford to provide each other in the event of a life-threatening emergency. The knowledge that you or your neighbor or a room full of crowded strangers is trained in CPR and Basic Life Support serves as the trusted guardian that can mean the literal difference between life and death. As intelligent beings we embody the characteristics of self-awareness and self-preservation. The latter is our way of ensuring we stay alive. Intelligence must tell us then, that to be individually trained in CPR is to save a life, but to train as a community is to save our own.

By: vitalethics