Area schools working to be Heart Safe

Districts’ effort focuses on cardiac arrest emergencies

A growing number of Northwest Arkansas schools are earning and seeking the Heart Safe School designation.

Jana Brown, a nurse at Westside Elementary, is coordinating the effort to make that school the first in Rogers to do so. Brown said she has the approval from the Rogers School District to work on achieving that status for all district schools. Brown, who served in the emergency room at Washington Regional Medical Center, is a registered nurse with a background in cardiology, she said.

Rogers isn’t the only area district participating in the Heart Safe initiative. Farmington, Gentry, Huntsville and Springdale already have schools that completed certification. Fayetteville is working on the program, according to a district email.

Charles Wooley, the state outreach and Heart Safe School coordinator at Arkansas Children’s Heart Institute, said 76 schools in the state are Heart Safe. There’s no state mandate for the voluntary program, Wooley said.

“This work is lifesaving and stands alone from any government policies,” Wooley said.

The Heart Safe initiative is part of Project ADAM, a nonprofit national organization started in 1999 after a series of sudden deaths of high school athletes in Wisconsin and Georgia, according to the Arkansas Children’s website. Wooley said 38 children’s hospitals across the country are participating.

ADAM is an acronym for Automated Defibrillators in Adam’s Memory. The program honors the memory of Adam Lemel, a 17-year-old Whitefish Bay, Wisc., high school student who collapsed and died while playing basketball, according to the Arkansas Children’s website.

Adam’s parents worked with Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin and the Herma Heart Center to create the program.

“Project ADAM and the Heart Safe program do save lives,” Brown said.

WHAT IS A HEART SAFE SCHOOL?

To be certified as Heart Safe, a school’s emergency response team must be trained to recognize and swiftly respond to cardiac arrest situations — which aren’t the same as a heart attack, Wooley said.

Cardiac arrest is sudden, with a person collapsing or slumping over, and indicates an electrical problem as the heart can’t conduct electricity in an organized manner and pump blood. The onset of a heart attack is more gradual in nature, Wooley said.

The only chance for survival with cardiac arrest is early CPR and the use of an automated external defibrillator, Wooley said.

In the event of cardiac arrest, Brown said the goal is to start defibrillation in three minutes or less. Without defibrillation, the survival rate for cardiac arrest is 7% to 9% — but it’s closer to 75% to 80% with the use of an automated external defibrillator, Brown said.

To become a Heart Safe facility, a school must devise a written plan to respond to cardiac emergencies, form a response team and stage practice drills, Wooley said.

Wooley personally conducts the final test for certification. On a day of the school’s choosing, Wooley said, he places a CPR mannequin at an undisclosed area of the school, grabs a random person and says there’s a medical emergency. The school is expected to activate its response team and start CPR, Wooley said. A school secretary calls 911, and the local fire department and EMS team also participate, he said.

Only adults are allowed on the school emergency response teams, Brown said, and members can be administrators, teachers or staffers such as custodians and food service workers — as long as they’re certified in CPR and trained to use an automated external defibrillator.

The goal is to determine unresponsiveness within 30 to 45 seconds and notify the school office, initiate the response team and call 911 in 45 to 60 seconds, said Amy Schultz, the Springdale School District’s director of nursing. The plan is to get CPR started within 75 to 90 seconds and apply the automated external defibrillator to stimulate the heart within three minutes, she said. The team must meet those requirements to be deemed Heart Safe, Schultz said.

After that, a school must run practice drills at least twice a year and be recertified every two years, Wooley said.

AROUND THE AREA

Five in Springdale are already Heart Safe schools. The district wants to achieve the designation for the rest by the end of this semester, Schultz said.

Schultz said all schools have completed the initial steps in the certification process. George, Hunt and Shaw elementary schools, Har-Ber High School and Hellstern Middle School are fully designated as Heart Safe, Schultz said. Each building’s nurse selects the response group — consisting of six to 15 members, depending on the school’s size, Schultz said. The nurse assigns individual roles such as who gets the automated external defibrillator and who administers chest compressions, Schultz said.

The Shaw team was strategically chosen based on skills, location in the building and CPR certification, said Morgan Ludwick, the school’s nurse. A 10-member team works best at Shaw, Ludwick said.

“We have definitely had events such as choking, an unresponsive adult, fainting, and badly broken bones since establishing our response plan,” Ludwick said.

“All have had amazingly quick response times and positive outcomes directly related to our preparedness.”

Ludwick said she is certain if she — the only registered nurse in the building — weren’t present, “our team would successfully swing into action without hesitation.”

The intermediate, middle and high schools in Gentry are certified as Heart Safe, said Mary Bailey, district nurse.

“As a school nurse, you don’t want to feel alone in responding to this,” Bailey said. “It’s important that’s there a team that’s prepared and competent to respond in case of an emergency.”

Some team members in Gentry were nervous at first, Bailey said, but practice sessions bolstered their confidence.

DEFIBRILLATORS

Automated external defibrillators are about the size of a little luggage bag, Brown said, and easy to carry.

A school response team member grabs the device from a cabinet on the wall, rushes to the site of the emergency and follows prompts from the defibrillator itself about placement of the pads and when or if to push the button to deliver a shock — electrical stimulation — to the patient. One pad is placed on the upper right chest, and the other goes on the left lateral side of the chest, Brown said.

“You just literally follow the prompts,” Brown said.

A typical automated external defibrillator costs between $1,200 and $2,400, Wooley said. There’s not currently a state initiative on purchasing defibrillators, but he said something is in the works. An online program — GotAED.org — is a great way for parents and staff to raise funds, Wooley said.

The recommendation now is for every school to have one automated external defibrillator for every 700 students and faculty combined, Brown said. She hopes, through fundraising in Rogers, to have more defibrillators in the schools, especially at gymnasiums and stadiums. Statistics indicate most cardiac arrests occur during physical activity, she said.

“We have definitely had events such as choking, an unresponsive adult, fainting, and badly broken bones since establishing our response plan. All have had amazingly quick response times and positive outcomes directly related to our preparedness.” Morgan Ludwick, nurse, Shaw Elementary School