心肺复苏 'heroes' need more support, report says

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When she arrived at her neighbor's house and found him unconscious and turning blue, 布丽安娜科尔奎特 knew what to do.

While someone called 911, Colquitt, then a high school senior in Carrollton, Georgia, started 心肺复苏. She kept it up until emergency responders arrived. 她的训练, which she'd received in a high school health class the year before, had prepared her to act, 她说. "Everything just clicked."

But it didn't prepare her for everything that followed. First came the news that her neighbor didn't make it. Then came the wondering: Had she done all she could? 即使是现在, more than three years later, "the memories are very vivid, because it was a traumatic experience,科尔奎特说.

The need to understand such experiences is part of what inspired a new report from the American Heart Association about lay responders and 心肺复苏.

"We've trained people for decades to do bystander 心肺复苏, but we've never actually gone back and paid attention to supporting them after we call them to action,凯蒂·丹蒂说, who led the writing committee for the 科学声明 published Monday in the AHA journal Circulation.

Lay people who perform 心肺复苏 are "amazing heroes,丹蒂说。, a research chair in patient-centered outcomes at Toronto's North York General Hospital. The new statement aims to serve those people better by summarizing the latest research on their experience, which could improve training, remove barriers to people taking action and, 最终, 拯救生命.

An estimated 347,322 adults in the U.S. have a cardiac arrest each year, 啊哈统计 显示. 心肺复苏 approximately doubles the odds of someone surviving a cardiac arrest, yet bystanders in North America initiate 心肺复苏 only 39% to 44% of the time, according to the new report.

There are big challenges to improving that rate that go beyond more training, 说的, who also is an associate professor at the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation at the University of Toronto.

在基本层面上, more people need to learn how to recognize a cardiac arrest – the person takes gasping breaths or has a bluish skin color, for example – and the need to respond immediately, 她说. Then, people need to be taught that it's OK to act even if they are not sure exactly what to do.

“很长一段线上电子游戏飞禽走兽, we made 心肺复苏 something that you needed to be a card-carrying member of a club to do,她说. But while training is important, "even if you've never been trained, 当你拨打911时, the dispatcher on the other end will help you. And a lot of people aren't aware of that."

Dainty thinks further research could help explain why some people act and some don't. Research also could inform more realistic training, which 她说 usually takes place "in an air-conditioned room, with a perfectly clean manikin lying flat on the floor. 非常田园. And no cardiac arrest ever happens that way."

Training, 她说, also needs to address how people feel after they've performed 心肺复苏. 对大多数人来说, the experience is "quite an incredible rush," but researchers haven't spent a lot of time thinking about the psychological impact afterward.

Responders often describe their experience as traumatic and stressful, 报告说, but there are no systems in place to follow up with them.

Some people struggle with problems such as "not being able to sleep, continuously reviewing the events in your head, wondering if you did the right thing,黛蒂说. Health care systems need to let responders know that such feelings are "totally normal, and that we have resources to help them with that."

Colquitt understands the jumble of feelings. Her experiences helped shape the report, which she helped write.

She feels her own 心肺复苏 training was "the best it could be," even though she found it "a lot harder to do it on a person" than on a manikin.

After an ambulance took her neighbor away, Colquitt followed it to the hospital, where she learned her neighbor had died. She was reassured by paramedics, who told her, "You did everything correctly. We saw you doing 心肺复苏 when we got there."

That helped, but she still rethought everything she had done. That day was "scary" and emotionally draining, 她说, and formal support could have helped.

But she has no regrets. "Even though it was a sad time afterwards, it gave me peace knowing I did everything I could do." The experience even helped lead her to pursue a career in health care. She's now a junior studying nursing at Jacksonville State University in Alabama.

Colquitt's advice to anybody pondering whether they should learn 心肺复苏 is: "Just go for it."

Dainty echoes that sentiment. Formal training is great, 她说, but even watching a reliable YouTube video can help someone prepare to save a life. When someone's heart stops working outside the hospital, 她说, a lay responder is their best chance at surviving.

"Without bystander 心肺复苏, they will stay dead,黛蒂说. "But 科学声明s like this one draw attention to the bigger picture and where we need to put our research efforts to ensure we aren't causing unintended harm to these heroes."

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