Have a heart — learn crucial CPR training

Learning and performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation is one of those potentially life-saving tasks everyone should learn to promote a safer society, but too few of us actually follow through with it.

That fact is made clear in a new study that found only 55 per cent of us would perform CPR on a stranger. And good luck if you’re what the researchers dubbed an “unkempt/ homeless” individual: Less than half of us would be willing to help someone like that. This information should be shocking. This, despite the 2010 release of a new set of guidelines suggesting untrained individuals skip the mouth-to-mouth component of CPR in cases not involving children and infants (turns out it doesn’t make much of a difference for adults). That nixes the previously understandable concerns around things like disease transmission.

If you didn’t know the suggested technique had changed to hands-only, don’t feel too badly: only about 14 per cent of those surveyed did. In fact, only 41 per cent could even identify what cardiac arrest was, which is distressing enough in itself.

It has been a struggle, previously, to get Canadians to give blood, or to sign their organ donor cards (and register online) and it was critical then — as it now is with CPR — to show just why this is behaviour that matters. Aggressive, persistent public education campaigns have been successful in boosting participation rates in other areas, and CPR deserves more promotion. It’s time to start making some more noise. The more who know how to save a life and the fewer misconceptions there are floating about, the more likely someone is to step up in the crunch. And stepping up matters.

It is critically important to act fast when someone’s heart stops: while only eight per cent of those who suffer cardiac arrest outside of a hospital survive — due in part to bystander-CPR rates that hover around 30 per cent — early CPR or defibrillation can increase chances of survival by 75 per cent.

Simple changes could help, such as more realistic training, away from sanitized plastic dolls in brightly lit rooms.

Imagine you were standing at the bus stop one morning and one of your fellow commuters suddenly collapsed at your feet with no pulse. Now imagine that person was your mother or father, your brother or sister, your son or daughter.

A stranger to us is a loved one to someone else, and we all want to believe a bystander would show the kindness and bravery required to save the life of someone precious to us.

Let’s do all we can to increase the odds.