In honor of National CPR Week, Long Beach Memorial is collaborating with the American Heart Association (AHA) and the Los Angeles County Emergency Medical Services Agency to coordinate a County-wide CPR program. Emergency health care providers, such as fire departments, ambulance companies, hospitals and education programs will be going out into the community to teach residents how to save a life with CPR. This service is free to the public and will be held in various locations across Southern California, including Long Beach Memorial, with the goal of increasing the number of lifesavers in the community.
To help educate our local Long Beach community, Long Beach Memorial will host a free Hands-Only CPR training on Tuesday, June 4 at 9 a.m. CPR instructors will be on-hand to demonstrate the basics and proper techniques of Hands-Only CPR. Participants will have the opportunity to practice on mannequins. The training will not result in CPR certification, but information on how you can get certified will be available.
Cardiac arrests are more common than you think, and they can happen to anyone at any time. At Long Beach Memorial, the most common ailment seen by our Emergency Department is chest pain. Nearly 2,400 patients are seen in the Emergency Department for this each month. Failure to act in a cardiac emergency can lead to unnecessary deaths. In fact, less than eight percent of people who suffer cardiac arrest outside the hospital survive. On the other hand, effective bystander CPR provided immediately after sudden cardiac arrest can double or triple a victim’s chance of survival.
Anyone can learn CPR – and Long Beach Memorial believes that everyone should. Sadly, 70 percent of Americans may feel helpless to act during a cardiac emergency because they either do not know how to administer CPR or their training has significantly lapsed. This alarming statistic could hit close to home, because home is exactly where 80 percent of cardiac arrests occur. Put very simply: The life you save with CPR is mostly likely to be someone you love or know.
By using Hands-Only CPR, bystanders can still act to improve the odds of survival, whether they are trained in conventional CPR or not.
Don’t be a bystander in a cardiac emergency. For more information about the free Hands-Only CPR training, contact Darice Hawkins at (562) 933-0596 or [email protected].