Minnesota Bystander CPR Training

Communities outside of Seattle and King County also have noteworthy approaches to CPR training. Some use marketing messages to encourage prompt action. Others use cardiac arrest survivors to facilitate CPR training classes.

Using the American Heart Association’s Family and Friends CPR Anytime^® Kit, the Minnesota SCA Survivor Network conducts school and community CPR and AED training throughout the state. When there is a need for a bystander CPR class, the survivors travel to the location to teach the class. The survivors are a dedicated group of volunteers that spend hundreds of hours every year making sure citizens of Minnesota are trained. Because the survivors tell their stories, learning CPR has a memorable impact on the participants.

SCA survivors and their families help to increase public awareness of SCA as well as to provide CPR training for bystanders. The Minnesota survivors are among the most active advocates of CPR training and SCA awareness in any area of the country.

Survivors wear bright orange Survivor t-shirts when teaching CPR classes and pull wheeled duffle bags embroidered with the MN SCA Survivor Network logo. The MN survivors have 10-15 CPR Anytime manikins in each bag, along with a DVD player and AED trainer.

Impact of optimizing bystander CPR

Overall, survivors comprise only about 8% of the nearly 200,000 people for whom EMS attempts resuscitation each year in the United States and Canada.¹³ This leaves much room for improvement. Improving the survival rate by just 2 percentage points across the country, from 8% to 10%, would save 4,000 additional lives each year.

To extend survival rates into excellent territory requires choreography of the care provided for OHCA victims. This begins with bystander CPR, and must involve clear and direct EMS dispatch CPR instructions, as well as the effective efforts of EMS professionals and hospital personnel. Because of the interdependence of each of layer of care, it is essential that participants at all levels understand the necessity of a continuous commitment to success. OHCA survival can be substantially improved, and stakeholders must ensure that programs and initiatives in their communities are successful.