Episode 4
Navigating Neva! Neva Nicole here.
Today is, Episode four.
Today, I am going to share with you, why CPR is important, and its role in the drowning process.
And that's because I want no drowning, I want a zero drowning summer. I want you to be safe, and I want each child to be safe.
I’m an aquatic professional with 20 plus years experience in my industry. Check out my bio.
From sitting on the stands and lifeguarding to certifying lifeguards, and running a pool, I have a lot. I’ve seen a lot and I’m here to share with you my opinion, and the resources that I’ve learned while I was out there.
Stay tuned, because today is an important lesson.
So, today is a little rough. I thought about it and I felt that it was important, and so we're going to talk about it. I thought about skipping it, and it's important, so we're going to get into it
So CPR saves lives.
CPR is a life-saving intervention, it is the corner stone of resuscitation and if I haven't told you yet, there's some stories that I’m going to share today, and they should drive this point home.
So, I want to recap: Last week we talked about the drowning process, the week before that was-- water safety, and my very first episode was layers of protection.
So in last week's episode, we talked about how drowning occurs. Water enters the airway and then we don't get any air and without any air there's no oxygen to send to the vital organs and then the outcome's bad: our heart stops.
So, CPR is important.
CPR is chest compressions, and that is us manually moving the heart and then we give breaths, so this is not hands-only-CPR. In my previous episodes I have said-- you can learn CPR, you can go to handonlycpr.com, and you can learn how to give CPR.
But if you have the time, I recommend that you take a CPR class, and then you will learn CPR which is compressions and breaths together, and that's what we're going to talk about today. We're going to talk about why this is so important, you want to give compressions and breaths.
So, I’m going to dive right in--dive right in with my stories. So CPR is important. I’ve got stacks of paper here, and I want to tell you some of the stuff I’ve got, that I’m going to post on my website. I’m going to post on Navigating Neva’s Facebook page and dot com. I’ve got the ‘New England journal of medicine’-- It talks about drowning. I have an article here from the Resuscitation academy-- it's the community, a CPR toolkit. I also have a publication here for psychology of drowning.
So what I really am going to talk about is the pulmonary resuscitation, quality improving, cardiac arrest, both the outcomes inside the hospital and outside of the hospital.
I’ve been in the industry for a long time, and I read all of these and I’m going to share them with you but in all there's even a thing here from EMS one where the guy talks about drowning -- drowning patients, resuscitation and monitoring.
You know how drowning has gone down over the last 10 years, but it's still important.
I’ve got the American heart association CPR facts and statistics. I’ve done a ton of research and on top of the research that I did, I have been certified in CPR since 1999. I have been certified through the National Safety Council, I’ve been certified through the American heart association, and I’ve been certified with the American Red Cross. I’ve been a CPR instructor since 2005. I have renewed my CPR certification every year and I want to tell you.
I have never done CPR, knock on wood. It just hasn't come up; I haven't needed to do it. I’ve done choking that's come up quite a few times. I’ve had the opportunity to use my skills and to perform choking, but never CPR. I do know some people that have done it and I’m going to share their stories with you and so, listen carefully.
So the first story I want to share with you: I was teaching a class and it was an American red cross CPR class and at the beginning of the class, there's a video and the video is kind of sad and this family was watching the video, and I could tell that they were touched. And as the video goes on I teach the class and class is fine at the end of the video. The woman says: I wanted to tell you that my daughter, a few months ago, she fell into a bucket and I saved her and I wasn't certified, I was certified in high school and I did CPR to the best of my ability, how I remembered it, and she was fine and the paramedics came and she was fine. But she wasn't fine.
I’ve said this before, and I’m going to say it again. She wasn't fine because when this Mom turned around, her daughter was in a five gallon bucket and her daughter wasn't breathing and her daughter was lifeless, and she grabbed her daughter out of the bucket and she did what she remembered, and it made a difference.
So, in all of these papers that I looked at, it tells you that the survival rate is low. It tells you the survival rate is 2 to 11 percent, and this is because 70 percent of cardiac arrests happen in a home or residential setting, and the people at home don't know what to do, they don't do anything, they don't give care, they stand there and they call 9-1-1 and they wait and then 9-1-1 arrives and 9-1-1 gives care.
So, the most important step is that initial step, and this Mama made that initial step, she did what she remembered, she gave CPR. Then she sat in my class, she got certified and now she knows what to do. But she knew what to do enough that she saved this baby, and when the paramedics got there, the baby was crying and the baby was fine.
And, now I use this mama and I have this mama talk-- this mama talks about the importance of backyard and home safety, and why we don’t leave any item full of water or rain water or water and buckets so that a toddler or a small child can fall into that bucket and drown, because it only takes two inches of water to drown, and you have to intervene.
So you've got to grab that baby out of that bucket, and you have to intervene and you make a difference because its intervention and it is the cornerstone of resuscitation. So, this is why CPR is so important and this is why it has a role in the drowning process. You have water-- it enters the lungs and we need to get that water out, so that we can resume breathing and she did that before the paramedics got there.
So, the next story that I have to share with you guys is a little bit different, it's a different situation, it's a different story and you guys might like it a little better. So, in this story, I teach lifeguarding-- I’ve been teaching lifeguarding for a long time. I’ve been a lifeguard for a long time and I’ve lifeguarded for a long time, and on this particular occasion I still know this lady, and I talk to her all the time, in fact I certified her again last year. I certified her to teach swim lessons and she taught them all summer but many years ago, I recertified her, she had been a lifeguard and her certification was up for renewal and we did a recertification and then the very next day she was on stand lifeguarding.
It was a very busy day at the pool, and there were a lot of people in the pool and the way the story goes: there was a lady and she came to the pool with her granddaughters and one was a little girl and one was a teenager. The teenager set her niece on the side and she said-- go play over there, pointing to the kiddie pool -- the little kid area, and then she turned around and the little girl sat down on the pool's edge or jumped in, and struggled. She struggled to get to her cousin, and she couldn't make it and she kept struggling and she took in water and then she was a floating little girl. And the cousin turned around and saw her cousin floating and picked her up like a like she cradle held her, she held her like a baby. And the grandma saw and the grandma screamed and the lifeguard came over, she got out of her stand, she was in the deep end, she ran over and she grabbed the little girl, she put her down on the pool deck and she did CPR, and this is how we're taught to do this, we were taught to give CPR. So she gives the little girl CPR and as she's giving the little girl CPR, the little girl throws up the water-- she expels water from her lungs onto the pool deck, and she grabs the lifeguard's finger and the lifeguard says -- ‘Are you okay?’ and the little girl's fine. And the paramedics get there, and they push more air into her lungs and she expels more water and this little girl's fine, this little girl made it.
So, my point is: CPR is important, there is a cardiac chain of survival in CPR. The cardiac chain of survival is: early recognition -- so you have to recognize that there is an emergency, and that your care is needed and that's what happened in both of these events. And the event with the mom and the daughter in the bucket, the mom recognized that the daughter needed help and in the event with the with the lifeguard, the lifeguard saw the girl was lifeless in her cousin's arms and she grabbed her and she put her on the pool deck and then they both provided early CPR, they knew what to do and how to respond and they gave compressions and that was the care that was needed.
The lifeguard was trained-- she had a duty to respond and the mother knew what to do and provided the compressions to her daughter and the outcome was a life-changing outcome, because CPR saves lives.
So, I want no drownings, I want a zero drowning summer, and how does this happen?
Well, hopefully, we have barriers in place and there's layers of protection, and we're watching, but sometimes that's not enough, sometimes accidents happen, and that's okay. Sometimes we follow all of our water safety rules and people still get in trouble, but if we get trained and we know how to respond and we respond without hesitation, and we give the care that's needed; we can make a difference, we can give CPR. And we can ignore the statistics, because the statistics are what's out there, but I’ve been in this profession and I’ve listened to stories. I’ve heard more stories, and I have never heard somebody tell me that they gave CPR and it didn't work. In every story that I’ve heard, I’ve heard that they gave CPR and it worked, it was successful. They gave CPR and the water came out and the child responded and I guarantee you, if you give CPR, this is going to be the same outcome that you get.
So, I don't know what else to say on this topic-- I feel that it's a pretty basic, a pretty basic topic. I’m going to post all of this stuff for you. Call 9-1-1: calling 9-1-1 is important; you guys can share your stories with me. I encourage you to share your stories with me. If you have questions, please ask them but CPR is important. You can get certified -- you can get certified not online, but most certifications now have blended learning options. We had them before COVID but now that COVID is over, we still offer them we had them before COVID and people didn't think that they were accepted by your employer, but they were. So, you can take your lecture and your discussion and your video, and you can watch that on your own time, and then you can meet with an instructor to go over your skills, to learn your skills, you can test off on a mannequin, and you can receive your certification and then you can be certified in CPR and that way you can make a difference, you can save a life, you can perform CPR and then we'll have no drowning.
So, I thank you guys for tuning in, this is episode four, and if you guys come back for the next one, we get out of all of my sad stories and we're going to move on.
I’m actually pretty excited about our next one: our next one is ‘emergency action plans’ and we're going to talk about what an ‘emergency action plan’ is and we go into a lot more than just drowning. We go into other things that could happen at your pool and how you can respond and what you can do and then we're going to talk about how to pick your swim instructors and we're going to talk about how you can teach yourself -how to swim. Don't forget that.
You guys can follow me on Instagram, you can follow me on Facebook, you can email me at navigatingneva@gmail.com. My website is navigatingneva.com.
This is Navigating Neva, this is Neva Nicole- I am signing off and I will see you guys next time.
Thank you, and have a happy and healthy summer.
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