Guide: How to Practice and Perform CPR
It’s one of the best things you can do as a human to learn how to perform CPR. Not only will you be capable of handling an emergency situation, but you could even end up saving someone’s life.
The key to feeling prepared to perform under pressure is to practice until you feel extremely confident in what you’re doing.
In this article, we’ll explain a general overview of how to practice and perform CPR so that you understand the importance of this life-saving skill.
You should certainly enroll in an official class to learn the techniques in person, but this guide will give you a framework for understanding what CPR is and how it works.
Whether you choose to learn it for personal growth or for the chance to eventually save someone’s life, learning CPR is one of the best ways you can spend your time.
Why Learn CPR?
How much better would you feel knowing that everyone around you is trained to be able to give you CPR if needed than if you looked around knowing that no one in the room could save you in case of some sort of terrible accident?
Most of us would much prefer to be in a room filled with others who know how to do CPR and save a life.
So why shouldn’t you be part of the solution rather than part of the problem?
What is CPR?
CPR stands for cardiopulmonary resuscitation. It is a procedure that is performed when someone is experiencing cardiac arrest.
Cardiac arrest means that a person’s heart has stopped pumping blood, which is fatal to the brain, heart, organs, and body as a whole.
The body will not survive more than a few seconds or minutes without an adequate supply of blood to keep it going.
Performing CPR pumps blood through the person’s body when their heart can’t. It keeps their body alive until more advanced help comes.
Thus, the main reason to learn CPR is the fact that it gives you the chance to save someone’s life.
Save a Life
If you ever find yourself in a situation where a person is unconscious and needs to be resuscitated or their heart has stopped entirely, and you’re able to provide help by giving them CPR, you could be the difference in whether they live or die.
Learning CPR comes with a big responsibility, but it also is a great gift.
Can you imagine how good you would feel if you were able to stop someone’s life from ending prematurely? That’s a feeling no words can describe.
Knowing how to perform CPR not only has the potential to save lives around you, it will also make you feel qualified, prepared, and ready to save a life at a moment’s notice. It’s a very empowering and reassuring skill to have.
How to Perform CPR
Keeping a person calm if they are conscious is essential. Most likely, however, they will be unconscious if they are experiencing cardiac arrest.
You should have someone call for emergency services and begin performing CPR immediately.
To perform CPR, you will need to be properly trained. Basically, though, CPR consists of repeatedly pressing up and down on a person’s chest and giving them mouth to mouth breaths to keep air in their lungs and blood coursing through their body.
You will need to receive official training to learn the proper technique of where to place your hands, how to press hard enough to be effective but not injure the person, when to provide breaths, etc.
If you know how to perform CPR properly, though, you can keep someone alive until trained medical personnel arrive on the scene.
They’ll bring special machines and devices that can shock the person’s heart back into a working rhythm.
After Performing CPR
You’ll need to keep performing CPR to keep the person alive until more qualified medical staff arrives and can take over.
After performing CPR, you may feel a bit shaken up and exhilarated from what you just did.
Calm the people around you or any witnesses, and check with emergency services personnel to see if there is anything else you need to do, like collect the person’s belongings for them or help contact a loved one.
Ensure that you deliver your charge to someone else’s care, and then take some time to process the experience.
Your adrenaline may be pumping hard and the situation may have upset you, but be grateful that you were around to help and may have just saved a person’s life.
You should keep current on your CPR skills. Practicing what you know regularly even if you aren’t sure whether you’ll need it soon is important.
It ensures that you are always prepared and won’t have to find yourself in a situation where you could be saving someone, but forgot how to do it.
Getting CPR certified should be done through a reputable organization that provides ample training and leaves you with an official card or certification that proves you know what you’re doing and would be able to perform CPR in case of an emergency.
Don’t simply try to learn from watching a video or hearing someone else’s instructions.
Need More Life Tips?
Learning CPR is one of the most important life skills you can learn.
It benefits your fellow humans and gives you peace of mind and confidence knowing you can handle the situation in case of an emergency.
For example, what if you were alone with a loved one in an isolated place and it was up to you to keep them alive until help could arrive? Could you do it? How would you feel if you couldn’t?
This is a major reason to learn how to perform CPR. You want to take care of your loved ones and keep them safe, and this is a clear path to do it.
Need more life tips and advice for living as the best possible human you can be? Browse our blog for ideas and inspiration, and start living your best life now!