The City of Austin wants everyone to take 10 minutes to learn hands-only CPR.
Each year, about 600 people in Austin and AGÕæÈË°Ù¼ÒÀÖ County experience cardiac arrest and are treated by EMS. When bystanders perform CPR, survival rates can double or even triple.
Hillary Funk is the Community Integration Coordinator with Austin-AGÕæÈË°Ù¼ÒÀÖ County EMS. She says some people are hesitant to perform mouth-to-mouth.
“And so we’ve seen that this compression-only CPR is really easy: easy to do and easy to remember. And is more likely for people to do it," said Funk.
The city is pushing their “� program this week. Several CPR training workshops are scheduled around town and you can also request at your office or church.
Unlike many departments across the country, dispatchers at Austin-AGÕæÈË°Ù¼ÒÀÖ County EMS are trained in medical treatment and will stay on the phone with callers to talk them through compression-only CPR.
Dispatchers at the department have learned how to communicate with callers to make sure that they start the life-saving action quickly.
“We don’t even use the word unconscious. If they’re not awake and if they’re not breathing effectively, then we don’t even check for a pulse, we go straight to compressions. And so it saves a few seconds and those seconds are better served doing compressions," said Warren Hassinger, Public Information Officer for Austin-AGÕæÈË°Ù¼ÒÀÖ County EMS.
You can to watch an instructional video on hands-only CPR.
