ProCPR Blog

Back in December, Time released their annual list of the top ten medical breakthroughs.  I completely forgot about this list until today, and figured that it was better late than never.

(more…)

CPR training for the youth of the country is something that we feel is very important.  In fact, we’re in the midst of the beginning of a project to provide that very service.  When we hear of things like this, it lends a lot of credibility to our own concept.

Sam Rafal, an eighth-grade physical science teacher at Madison County Middle School – and also a licensed EMT – has been teaching CPR to the students in his classes for several years. But this year, he received a grant that allowed him to expand instruction to the entire eighth grade.

“I just know that seconds and minutes count,” said Rafal, who’s seen many cardiac-arrest patients in his 25 years as an EMT. “And I just knew that the more people we could get in the field who knew CPR, the more likely that someone who needed help would have someone close to them who could help.”

-via

Recently we’ve been hard at work on a new Pet First Aid course for the UK.  There seems to have been an outbreak of dogs getting CPR done on them, and this story is no different.

When firefighter Tammy Rodriguez was greeted by the rambunctious, brown and white pitbull in the Engine 57 station house Friday night, she couldn’t believe her eyes.

“Oh my gosh, are you kidding me?” she said.

Just hours earlier, Rodriguez went to work on the lifeless dog as her colleagues finished putting out the fire in the 1800 block of North Honoree Street.

Firefighter Terry Reilley said the fire “pretty much destroyed” the second and third floors of two buildings.

“And I would imagine water damage probably ruined the first floor of each,” he said.

During her efforts, Rodriguez went through two tanks of oxygen, fed through a mask fitted for animals, and performed cardiopulmonary resuscitation on the animal.

“For a while, there, it wasn’t reacting, but I think just the positive pressure of oxygen made it start breathing, which was exciting.  And then we just kept working her and all of a sudden she just opened her eyes… and then she got up,” recalled Rodriguez.

We’ve recently launched a new program that we’re very proud of and excited about.  We are hopeful that many of you will want to take part in this, and train to become a CPR Skill Evaluator.

The course is blended, so while you can watch the videos and take the test online, we also require some extra training which we can do via webcam.

Becoming a CPR Skill Evaluator will also get you listed on Blended CPR.  That way, people in your area can contact you for a skill evaluation, giving you another source of income.

You can train to evaluate for our CPR, First Aid or First Aid Basic programs.  Learn about each of the Skill Evaluator Training Courses.

You can learn more, or get started today at ProSkillEval.com, and if you’d like to learn more, download the Student Manual PDF all about the program.

We worked pretty hard on the training video library.  We spent time re-filming all of the necessary videos to cover the 2010 CPR guideline updates.  The updates apply to our CPR and First Aid training libraries:

ProCPR Training Videos

ProFirstAid Training Videos

ProFirstAid Basic Training Videos

ProFirstAid Advanced Training Videos

It has been a lot of work, but it’s worth it to make sure you’re all well trained and up to date.

We’ve also uploaded all of the videos to our YouTube Channel.  If you’d like to subscribe to the channel, we do add new videos there from time to time.

We hope that you enjoy the training videos.

Pet CPR is becoming more popular these days.  Recently the life of a dog was saved by the simple knowledge of CPR.  The dog was drowning in floodwaters, and that is where the story starts.

A Kuranda woman jumped into floodwaters to rescue a drowning dog then gave it mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to bring it back to life. Petra Lovey yesterday told how she jumped into the Barron River after seeing Jerzy the border collie-cross dive into the swollen waters and get swept under a bridge.

“The last thing I saw were her eyes looking at me as she was swept under the old wooden bridge,” Ms Lovey said. “The Barron River flows like a torrent so it didn’t take much for her to be sucked under the bridge.”

(more…)

Paramedic Roy Shaw is doing a series of entries about the newly released 2010 CPR guideline updates. If you’d like to go in-depth with the new guidelines, take a look at the following entries, and continue to follow his series as he updates with more.

2010 Latest CPR Guidelines Released

2010 CPR Update Series – 911 and Dispatcher Changes

2010 CPR Update Series – Compression Only CPR

Here are a few of the changes in CPR Guidelines for 2010.  This makes a few significant changes from the 2005 guidelines.  The focus with these changes is on good chest compressions.  Here are just a few of the differences between the 2005 and 2010 guidelines.

We’re going to be working on updating the videos on our websites as soon as possible, but while you wait, allow us to take you through some of the main points.

Firstly, there is a switch in the order of operations when you begin the CPR process.  Instead of starting with airway, then breathing and finally compressions, we’re going to start with compressions first.  This is based, in part, on the new Hands-Only CPR initiative of 2008.  After that you start on airway and breathing.  It’s a simple switch from A-B-C to C-A-B.

(more…)

This coming Monday, October 18, 2010, the new CPR guidelines will be released. The updates, which come out every five years, are speculated to increase the recommendation of compressions-only (hands-only) CPR.

We’re hoping to bring the updates to you as soon as we can, once the guidelines have been released.

What do you expect the changes to be, this time?

UPDATE: 2010 CPR Guideline Updates

We’re going to start a series of entries on CPR as it happens in movies and television shows.  It happens pretty regularly, and not always correctly.  In fact, it happens incorrectly more often than not.

We’re going to look at one scene per movie or television series for each entry.  We’ll be looking at classic scenes from films like The Sandlot and television series such as Lost and Scrubs.  If you have suggestions as to other movies and TV shows to look at for an entry, do let us know!

Let’s have fun with this series.  We’ll try to get clips whenever it is possible, but if not, then we’ll grab some screen captures from the scenes.