Forwarded by burchworks: Children Perfectly Capable of Doing CPR

We don't often hear about children learning how to do cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), but that doesn't mean they can't. After all, skills learned early are often retained in some sense. And, researchers found that this is true for CPR too.

When I used to teach first aid, people used to say to me that they couldn't possibly learn first aid or CPR because they always panicked in an emergency. I'd counter with, they probably panic because they don't know what to do.

Knowing first aid or CPR doesn't mean you have to know how to do everything perfectly. It does mean that you learn how to do things, you learn the best you can and then you do what you feel comfortable with and what you can do well.

For some people, the limit is recognizing an emergency and calling for help. With others, it can be knowing how to ensure a victim is stabilized. Yet others can do everything they were taught. And this is the same for children.

While teaching CPR means teaching compressions and using a defibrillator, if all the children remember how to do well is how to check for a heart beat, call for help and use the rescue position, then that's great! It's more than they would have known before the course. And, according to a study just published in the online journal Critical Care , they can do that just:

although the smallest may lack the requisite strength, the knowledge of how to perform basic life support is well retained by young children.

Researchers studied 147 9-year-olds who took 6 hours of emergency support training. When they were quizzed on what they learned 4 months later, over 80% had remembered what they'd been taught.

The press release concludes :

The researchers conclude, "Given the excellent performance by the students evaluated in this study, the data support the concept that CPR training can be taught and learnt by school children and that CPR education can be implemented effectively in primary schools at all levels. Even if physical strength may limit CPR effectiveness, cognitive skills are not dependent on age, and with periodic retraining, children's performance would likely improve over time."

What do you think? Do you feel children should be taught CPR?

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Images: iStock.com

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Children Perfectly Capable of Doing CPR

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