This orientation week for our rural health module we were given a refresher course in CPR. For those of you unfamiliar with this term, it stands for Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation.
The latest guidelines advice 30 chest compressions to 2 effective breaths at a rate of 100 compressions per minute.
Sounds pretty easy but how do you know if you're really going at 100 compressions per minute?
It's more than 1 compression /sec and less than 2 /sec. The reason why it shouldn't be slower is because if you pump too slow you risk under perfusing the brain. If you go too fast you don't allow enough time for blood to fill the heart chambers therefore making each compression less efficient and tire yourself out faster.
To save the day, our nurse facilitator whipped out her CD player and started blasting a song to which we pumped happily away to the beat of...
"WE ALL LIVE IN A YELLOW SUBMARINE! YELLOW SUBMARINE! YELLOW SUBMARINE!"
And there we have it... 100 beats per minute. Who would ever have thought that the Beatles would come in so useful :D Be proud of yourself John, Paul, George and Ringo.
No comments:
Post a Comment