Topic > Essay on Medical Emergency Preparedness - 1562

If a person is dying and there are no medical professionals around, the lay person must know how to respond if they want to save a life. Knowing how to save a person's life seems like something every person would like to know how to do, but studies conducted by the American Heart Association show that "70% of Americans may feel helpless to act during a cardiac emergency because they don't know how to do so." . to perform CPR or their training has significantly lapsed” (AHA). Additionally, in a survey conducted at Bellevue East High School it was found that over 80% of respondents had no CPR and first aid training or certification. This is a big problem because “nearly 383,000 out-of-hospital sudden cardiac arrests occur each year, and 88% of cardiac arrests occur at home” (AHA). Such a small percentage of people trained compared to such a huge number of emergencies shows how important it is to be prepared for CPR training to save a life. However, CPR is not the only important thing to do in a medical emergency situation. Basic first aid skills such as immobilization, abdominal thrusts, seizure protocol, extreme bleeding protocol, allergic reaction protocol and hot/cold protocol are equally vital to saving a person's life. person as much as CPR is. A person never knows when they might find themselves in a situation like the one Josh Holt or Keith Hadley were in, where life-saving skills like those described above might come into play