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Taylorsville Journal

New ‘Push to Survive’ Program Helping Save Lives

Sep 15, 2015 10:22AM ● By Bryan Scott

New ‘Push to Survive’ Program Helping Save Lives

By Jessica Thompson 

Taylorsville - There are nearly 300,000 people who experience cardiac arrest each year, with 92% of these people not surviving. If a bystander administers CPR within two minutes, 50% of these victims can survive. 

How can you become that bystander that saves a life? In the month of August, Unified Fire Authority and Salt Lake City Fire Department hosted a free public education event, called Push to Survive, to help teach local community members a new technique on the traditional CPR. 

 “We started looking at the national trends for survival rates for cardiac arrest, along with the way we respond to those calls, and decided we needed to start a campaign to help community members learn more about the part they play in saving lives,” EJ Hinterman, the Unified Fire Authority member over the event, said.  

Instead of the traditional four-hour CPR class and written test, this new CPR training teaches the same style of CPR resuscitations but focuses on a fast, two-step assessment: and does it within 10 minutes. 

Students watched a 10 minute video produced in-house by the fire department. As students followed along, they performed what they learned on a mannequin. The video explained the background of CPR, as well as focusing on the most important aspect of CPR: chest compressions.  

“This new program is boiled down to the most important information and has taken away the information that scared people into inaction. This new program helps them to become confident, letting them know what to do and that they can do it. The people who take this CPR course leave more confident, which leads to higher success rates,” Hinterman said. 

At the Push To Survive event, students learned how they can help save a life by doing what they can before USPD can respond to the their call. This program has made it possible to also learn these techniques at home, by watching the same CPR training video online and practicing on a couch cushion. 

Knowledgeable community members are the ones that make the difference in a person surviving or not. If nothing is done to help an individual undergoing cardiac arrest within the 7-8 minutes between a 911 call and help arriving, the survival rates are very low.  

“Everything depends on the type of care they receive before we arrive. We teach that the only wrong way to perform CPR is by doing nothing. We want to empower people to take initiative and give that person every chance of survival,” Hinterman said.   

This event has already seen success from the techniques taught within those 10 minutes. This campaign also teaches police officers, as well as community members, the same style of resuscitation and beginning actions to take if the individual is unconscious or not breathing normally. Firefighters taught the USPD through their video about these techniques. One police officer who received the training was on duty when he was waved down because someone had collapsed. 

“He employed the new system we taught him and that person survived. We are already seeing success rates from this program,” Hinterman said.    


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