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Not on their watch: Plano EMS pushes more CPR training for residents
Photo courtesy of the city of Plano - Thanks to an initiative to increase CPR awareness and training throughout the community, Plano’s survivorships rates for cardiac arrest are far greater than those of other locations in the U.S. – 71 percent compared to the national average of 29 percent.
By Kelley Chambers, kchambers@starlocalnews.com
Plano's push for CPR awareness is paying off, as a national registry reported its residents have an almost 50 percent better chance of surviving cardiac arrest than the national average.
According to the Cardiac Arrest Registry to Enhance Survival Program, most cardiac arrest victims face a 29 percent chance of survival if a witness performs CPR on them and EMS responds with defibrillation. Thanks to increased awareness and training throughout the community, the chance of survival jumped to 71 percent in Plano last year.
"If you had to have a heart attack or trauma, this is the place to do it," Assistant Fire Chief Jim Dickerson said. "We never want it to happen, but we're trying to make it a safer city for it to happen in."
The chance of survival drops significantly when CPR is not applied after a victim collapses from cardiac arrest -- going from a 9 percent survival rate compared to 14 percent in Plano. The numbers speak even more volumes considering what Plano's EMS is compared with in the registry, said Plano EMS Director Mark Gamber in an informational video made for the city's television network.
"These numbers are from high-performing systems," Gamber said. "I would venture to say if you really took every city in the United States, the number would probably really be about 5 or 6 percent survivorship. Overall our survivorship is excellent in Plano."
Cardiac arrest is different than a heart attack in that, if somebody is having a heart attack, they usually experience symptoms such as chest discomfort, shortness of breath or a squeezing in their left arm, and they're still alive, Gamber said. Such is not the case when it comes to someone in cardiac arrest.
"A cardiac arrest patient is someone who probably has had a heart attack recently and their heart has stopped," said Gamber in the video. "That's because with an untreated heart attack, heart muscles die and it's eventually going to stop working."
Capt. Peggy Harrell attributed the favorable numbers, in large part, to the department's 2010 push to have as many residents trained in CPR, starting with the city's employees. Thanks to two community benefits grants from Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital of Plano and a donation from a group of local physicians, the department began offering compression-only CPR to the employees in hopes they would pass on the knowledge.
"They take the kit home and, with the DVD and the mannequin, they teach spouses, in-laws, golf buddies, church groups, anybody that's important to them and that they spend time with," Harrell said.
All fire department personnel gain certain levels of training when it comes to CPR and other life-saving procedures. In addition to the basics, paramedics also receive enhanced education with help from local hospitals. Examples include a shadowing day with emergency physicians at the Medical Center of Plano, cadaver labs and simulated training. This type of advanced, yearly skills-testing is very intense, Dickerson said.
"You don't just stop when you become a paramedic; it's a continuous process," he said. "We've done a lot also with our equipment and education, which have gotten much better over the years, as well."
Thanks to CPR standards becoming much simpler with the push for compressions only instruction, Dickerson said the arduous 8-hour training day many people relate to when they think of a CPR class can really be taught over lunch. There are still some core elements of the traditional course, he said, but the way in which the content is presented has become much easier to digest, making it just as easy to apply in a real-life situation.
"We're always trying to improve our treatment of sudden cardiac arrest, but some of the training we've done recently we're reaping the benefits of," Dickerson said. "It takes a village for all of this to come together. It's really thanks to our citizens and them learning CPR and being willing to do CPR if a sudden cardiac arrest occurs."
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