CPR / AED Awareness Week
Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest
Each year, about 310,000 coronary heart disease deaths occur out-of-hospital or in emergency departments in the United States. Of those deaths, about 166,200 are due to sudden cardiac arrest – nearly 450 per day.
- Sudden cardiac arrest can happen to anyone at any time. Many victims appear healthy with no known heart disease or other risk factors.
- Sudden cardiac arrest is not the same as a heart attack. Sudden cardiac arrest occurs when electrical impulses in the heart become rapid or chaotic, which causes the heart to suddenly stop beating. A heart attack occurs when the blood supply to part of the heart muscle is blocked. A heart attack may cause cardiac arrest.
Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (CPR)
- Less than one-third of out-of-hospital sudden cardiac arrest victims receive bystander CPR.
- Effective bystander CPR, provided immediately after sudden cardiac arrest, can double or triple a victim’s chance of survival.
- The American Heart Association trains more than 10 million people in CPR annually, including health professionals and members of the general public.
- The most effective rate for chest compressions is 100 compressions per minute – the same rhythm as the beat of the BeeGee’s song, “Stayin’ Alive.”
Automated External Defibrillators (AEDs)
- Unless CPR and defibrillation are provided within minutes of collapse, few attempts at resuscitation are successful.
- Even if CPR is performed, defibrillation with an AED is required to stop the abnormal rhythm and restore a normal heart rhythm.
- New technology has made AEDs simple and user-friendly. Clear audio and visual cues tell users what to do when using an AED and coach people through CPR. A shock is delivered only if the victim needs it.
- AEDs are now widely available in public places such as schools, airports and workplaces.
CPR/AED Awareness Survey
- Eighty-nine percent of respondents said they were willing and able to do something to help if they witnessed a medical emergency.
- Few Americans (12%-20%) are confident that they would know when it is appropriate to perform CPR or use an AED.
- At most, roughly four in ten are extremely or very likely to perform CPR on an adult (39%) or child (37%) they know personally.
- Less than 17 percent of Americans believe they are at risk for sudden cardiac arrest.
- The survey was conducted online within the United States by Harris Interactive on behalf of the American Heart Association between January 8, 2008 and January 21, 2008 among 1,132 U.S. residents aged 18 and older.
Public Policy for CPR/AEDs
The American Heart Association supports state public policy initiatives that:
- Promote the access and use of AEDs and establish quality AED programs in high-risk locations
- Encourage bystander CPR and CPR training for professionals who may need to respond to medical emergencies
- Promote increased quality and appropriate use of 9-1-1 systems
- Extend Good Samaritan legal liability protection to all users of AEDs
The American Heart Association also supports increased funding for the Rural and Community Access to Emergency Devices Program, which gives communities funding to place automated external defibrillators (AEDs) in rural areas and trains lay rescuers and first responders to use AEDs.
Social networking for business
After reading my latest article on all the different social networks that I’m involved in my employer, SCHILLER Australia, is wanting to get a little more “social and interactive” on the internet so they have asked me to investigate how they can do that.
The brief that was given to me in a meeting today is that it needs to be easy, it needs to have the ability to be put in front of a large audience, it needs to be secure, and most of all it needs to be user friendly for the CEO. The obvious thing that springs to mind, for me at least, is that they should get involved in a number of different social networking websites.
So here’s what I’m thinking network wise, and some examples of how they can get involved.
Twitter - despite it’s downtime and constant crashing Twitter is actually cool and potentially quite useful to us. One use is to answer service questions and basic medical / cardiac questions. It can also be used for announcing upcoming product releases and other news articles.
Facebook - On Facebook you can setup ‘fan pages’ for companies and / or products. The awareness that could be created for public access level products, ie. at-home defibrillators and CPR training products, could be used to open the market up and have us being seen as a leader in the field.
YouTube - We sell a number of products which are very simple to use and essentially require no training, however there are always a few customers who do require some training. With these products our reps, in most cases, spend more time driving to and from the customer’s to deliver the training than they do actually training the customers. If we were able to avoid all that wasted travel time by being able to deliver the training via You Tube, or similar video site, we could save quite a bit of money and also it would also provide a great reference resource that customers can revert back to, not to mention that it could also be used as pre-sale training so that the potential customer would know a lot more about the particular product.
Last FM - Currently we have one of our old computers plugged into our telephone system and our on-hold music is played in iTunes and streamed out to the phone whenever anyone is on-hold. This is more of a novelty rather than a sales and or brand awareness tool, however it would keep information ticking over on our website as well as giving people an insight into our company persona via the types of music that we listen to.
Flickr - Our sales team is constantly on the road, and also attend a large number of conferences, expos and seminars around the world each year. We could have a company Flickr account setup to showcase these different events we attend, the people we meet, the products we see, and some of the different places we travel to each year for business. Again this is more of a novelty than an actual sales tool however it’s the sort of thing that does bring people on to your website when you’re taking their photos at various events and can show a more human side to the company rather than just being a ‘faceless organisation’.
Upcoming - Upcoming can be used as an events calendar where our customers can see where we will be displaying our product range at the various conferences, expos and other events we attend. People can subscribe to it and also contact us to book personal product demonstrations and alike.
There’s a handful of other social networking websites that I’ve also considered but am still undecided on. The reason I’m undecided on these ones varies but mostly it’s because of privacy concerns for our staff, and in the case of Linked In there is the potential that it can be used by companies to ‘head hunt’ our staff and while they could probably achieve that anyway I don’t want to make it any easier for them
So that’s what I’m thinking at the moment, and from here I will be making a presentation of this to the boss in the next couple of days so I’m eager to here from you guys think and if there are other potential social networks are out there that could be worth taking a look at as well.
Find me here