App teaches students how to be lifesavers
Using just their smartphones, high school students in Peel learn to operate a heart defibrillator
Ajethan Ramachandranathan, a healthy high school student, was kicking a soccer ball around with classmates in the gym at Weston Collegiate Institute in April 2013 when his heart suddenly stopped and he collapsed.
Gym teacher Jeff Crewe grabbed a heart defibrillator installed just outside the room — a device that would not have been there, or anywhere nearby, just a few years earlier.
“He attached the paddles to my chest,” Ramachandranathan said, recounting what witnesses told him later. “It brought my heart back.”
Now, a new life-saving app is at the fingertips of more than 40,000 high school students across Peel Region.
Incorporated into the public school board’s community-involvement program, the mobile app offers video tutorials and quizzes on how to conduct CPR and use a defibrillator to revive people in cardiac arrest.
The easy-to-use devices work by detecting cardiac arrhythmias and jolting the heart back into a regular rhythm. They have been instrumental in saving the lives of at least one teacher and four teenagers — including Ramachandranathan — on school grounds, said Eva Szypulska, president of the Mikey Network, a charity started more than a decade ago to distribute defibrillators across the GTA. It is named for Mike Salem, who died in his 50s of a heart attack on a Muskoka golf course.
The Toronto-based charity has installed more than 270 defibrillators in schools in Toronto, Peel and Halton regions since Salem’s death in 2002. “We hope to have hundreds of students walking around and not being afraid of grabbing that machine off the wall,” Szypulska said.
While the defibrillators have been in place for years, students had virtually no familiarity with the devices, known as automated external defibrillators (AEDs).
High school students in Mississauga, Brampton and Caledon can now complete the Mikey Young at Heart app’s three “courses” to fulfil up to four and a half hours a year of their 40-hour community-involvement requirement for graduation.
“It appeals to the teenagers. They love apps on their phones. The fact that they can gain volunteer hours makes it even sweeter,” said Clarkson Secondary School principal Jim Kardash.
“This is a skill that gives back to the community, and it’s one they’ll have for life . . . The training wasn’t onerous, but the responsibility is.”
Midori Fukusaka, a 15-year-old Grade 10 student, said the app videos were “a little cheesy” but the information was vital and came across clearly, “so it’s OK.”
“It’s a little bit intimidating, but not a lot,” added Kayley Baker, a 14-year-old Grade 10 student, as she applied the defibrillator’s padded electrodes to a dummy. “You gotta do what you gotta do because it does happen.”
The Mikey Network is also in talks with the Halton and Toronto school boards about the Mikey Young at Heart app, downloadable on Apple and Android devices, Szypulska noted.
Numerous jurisdictions in the United States have mandated defibrillators in public facilities, including fitness centres, high schools and dentist offices. Legislative pushes in Ontario over the past 15 years have failed to make defibrillators mandatory in public areas. With files from Ryan Starr