The American Heart Association is continuously working diligently to bring CPR training to high schools. They’ve been very successful within recent years, as they boast 1,000,000 graduates will know how to administer CPR by the time they leave school each school year.
While they’re regularly hosting training classes that are available to the general public, they’ve made a concerted effort towards making CPR training mandatory in high schools and have recently seen some great success.
There are currently 18 states that will require CPR training for high school graduation by the 2016-2017 school year at the very latest, but several of those states have already had it as a requirement for quite a while.
Why teach CPR?
Why all the commotion, though? Does CPR really save that many lives? Even if you’ve never been in a situation where CPR was required, it’s important to realize that cardiac arrest is a leading cause of death in the United States.
While CPR may not have a 100% success rate in all cases, many of those deaths could have been prevented had a citizen that was well-trained in CPR been on hand to respond early to the situation.
First responders on the scene can drastically improve the victim’s chance at life, sometimes even as much as by two or three times when compared to just receiving CPR when EMS arrives.
New training methods
The American Heart Association is working hard to train as many people as they can in the practice and have begun rolling out newer technologies. They now have a specially designed training kit available for schools that can help drastically maximize teaching efficiency.
Each
kit will be able to manage 10 students at one time and the device
itself will come jam packed with all of the latest technologies and
up to date research. One kit can easily go on to train hundreds of
students.
With the AHA’s recent successes in making CPR
training mandatory for graduation, they’ll be able to reach even
more students with this life saving and easy to learn technique.
The timeline
Let’s take a closer look at the states that have adopted laws that will require CPR training:
1984
– A very early adopter, Alabama has been requiring its high school
graduates to receive training in CPR ever since the mid-80s.
2008
– Iowa begins to require CPR training for high school
graduation
2012 – Tennessee and Vermont being their
requirement
2013 – Rhode Island and Georgia get on board
2014
– The biggest year yet, with 10 states requiring training: New
Jersey, Maryland, North Carolina, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas,
Texas, Minnesota, Utah, and Washington.
2015 – Idaho and
Oklahoma will begin its requirement for CPR training in the 2015-2016
school year.
2016 – Virginia will adopt its
requirements.
Learning CPR is a fantastic way to help cut back
the fatalities of one of America’s top killers. Around 383,000
cardiac arrests occur out of hospital every year. The majority of
these (88%) will occur within the victim’s home. CPR is one of the
best tools that the American Heart Association has in its continual
fight against cardiac arrests.