‘Stayin’ Alive’
Orange high schoolers learn CPR in training sessions
A speaker booming The Bee Gees’ “Stayin’ Alive” set the rhythm for dozens of Boone High School students Friday as they pumped the chests of dummies in the school’s gymnasium.
By the end of the day, the students — along with an estimated 34,000 others in Orange County — would be certified in CPR and the use of automated external defibrillators, a record number for the county, which has been conducting the training in its schools for three years.
The Orlando Fire Department and the American Heart Association hosted the handsonly CPR training at all of the county’s 20 high schools in recognition of World Heart Day.
It’s also part of the Fire Department’s Take Heart Orlando program, which aims to train every Orlando resident in CPR.
“Having the ability to help a person until paramedics arrive is crucial,” said Harold Border, chief of high schools for Orange County Public Schools. “Keeping the blood flowing, the oxygen flowing certainly helps reduce damage and make the prospects for the person’s outcome much greater until the paramedics arrive.”
Seniors in the high school’s
Academy of Health Sciences, who are already CPR certified, helped firefighters guide other students as they learned to clasp their hands together and repeatedly thrust down on a mannequin’s chest to the tune of the 70s hit. The dummy responds with a clicking noise that tells them they’re doing it right.
Olivia Urick, a senior at Boone in the Academy of Health Sciences who shadows medical personnel at Orlando Regional Medical Center, said watching hospital staff revive a patient using CPR showed her the value in knowing the technique.
“That was very intense in the moment, but they were able to revive them,” Urick said. “It was very refreshing, I guess, and it revealed the purpose of why we wanted to be there and why we were there.”
Being able to administer CPR in an out-of-hospital setting before first-responders arrive can drastically increase a person’s chance of survival, firefighters at the school said. Every minute that goes by without CPR lowers the person’s chances by 10 percent.
“Let’s say you have an event, you call the Fire Department, they respond and it takes, say, three minutes to get there,” Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer said Friday. “If somebody hasn’t been administering CPR to you, you have a 30 percent less chance of survival.
“So I would like to know that you and you and you know CPR and if I fall down right here and need some attention, you know how to give it,” he told the students.
The program focuses on ninth graders, who packed the gym during their P.E. and health classes throughout the day. Many during the 10 a.m. session raised their hands when a firefighter asked how many know a family member or friend with heart disease.
“I think a lot of our kids have experienced this in one way or another throughout their family as well, and I think it strikes a personal cord with a lot of our students,” Borders said.