Can you perform CPR in an emergency and save someone's life?

Each year, there are tens of thousands of cardiac arrests in the UK, and the survival rate is low. The most important thing you can do is give CPR straight away.

Our cardiac nurse, Ruth Goss, explained how you can perform CPR in our February Live & Ticking event.

“When working as a nurse, I performed CPR many times. Never did I think, am I hurting this person? Which is often something that can cause people to hesitate. I was actually always thinking, have I done enough to help this person?”, explains Ruth.

A cardiac arrest happens when there’s an electrical problem in the heart and it suddenly stops pumping blood around your body. Someone having a cardiac arrest won’t be conscious so you should first check for a response when finding someone in trouble. Call 999 or ask someone nearby to call for an ambulance. When help is on the way, you need to start performing CPR.

When starting chest compressions, place the heel of one hand in the centre of their chest and place your other hand on top, interlocking your fingers. With straight arms, use the heel of your hand to push the breastbone down firmly, so that the chest is pressed and released. Do this at a rate of 100-120 chest compressions per minute. Using certain songs can help you count the beats. If you have Spotify, you can listen to our CPR playlist here.

Ruth went on to explain, “Nerves are normal when in the moment! But when you’re performing life-saving CPR, you often find clarity by concentrating on helping someone. So don’t be afraid to try when in an emergency. Just keep going until professional help arrives.”

Early CPR and defibrillation can more than double the chances of survival for someone who has had a cardiac arrest in some cases. If you don’t feel confident performing CPR, download our online training course, RevivR, and practice each step.

How can we improve instructions for CPR?

BHF researcher Dr Barbara Farquharson at the University of Stirling is looking to improve outcomes from out-of-hospital cardiac arrest. When people find someone whose heart has stopped, they usually phone an ambulance and are given instructions about how to perform CPR. Unfortunately, many people don’t perform CPR despite these instructions and lives can be lost as a result. Dr Farquharson’s research is looking into why people hesitate and how call handlers can provide instructions to encourage more people to do CPR. They will analyse recordings of ambulance staff giving instructions to try to work out what stops people and what helps.

Based on this information, they will identify behaviour change techniques that they think will help and add them into the script that ambulance staff follow during these calls. In a realistic mock scenario, they will then compare whether people who receive the new script perform CPR sooner than those who receive standard instructions. This will help them know whether to train all ambulance staff in the behaviour change script.

Want to hear more from Dr Barbara Farquharson and our cardiac nurse Ruth Goss?

Watch our Live & Ticking event here