Friday, March 29, 2024

2nd Annual Staying Alive Event Set for February 2015!

UPDATE 2-9-2015: There is still time to sign up!  Contact Southlake DPS Community Initiatives Coordinator Renni Burt at (817) 748-8349 to get your spot on the list.

Sign up now for the next “Staying Alive” event scheduled for Saturday, February 14, 2015 from 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. at the DPS North Training facility. 

Anyone can learn CPR – and everyone should! Sadly, 70 percent of Americans may feel helpless to act during a cardiac emergency because they either do not know how to administer CPR or their training has significantly lapsed. You never know when this alarming statistic could hit close to home, because home is exactly where 88 percent of cardiac arrests occur. Put very simply: The life you save with CPR is mostly likely to be someone you love.

If you haven’t had CPR training in a while, this is the perfect opportunity to learn the best practices for performing CPR in the event of a medical emergency.  Classes are FREE and instruction is “hands only.” Classes will be held every 20 minutes.

There will also be lots of fun activities for kids and families and lots of giveaways! We hope to see you there so mark calendars now for Saturday, February 14, 2015 — DPS North Training Facility 100 East Dove Rd. — from 10:00 a.m. – 2:00 p.m. You may contact Community Initiatives Coordinator Renni Burt at (817) 748-8349 to sign up.

For more information about the importance of CPR see the following ‘Fact Sheet’ from the American Heart Association.

CPR & Sudden Cardiac Arrest (SCA)
Fact Sheet

The American Heart Association is calling on all Americans to learn how to give Hands-Only CPR.  Once you have learned CPR, give 5 people you care about the power to save lives by equipping them to act quickly in a crisis.

Don’t be afraid; your actions can only help. If you see an unresponsive adult who is not breathing or not breathing normally, call 911 and push hard and fast on the center of the chest.

WHY LEARN CPR?
Cardiac arrests are more common than you think, and they can happen to anyone at any time.

  • Nearly 383,000 out-of-hospital sudden cardiac arrests occur annually, and 88 percent of cardiac arrests occur at home.
  • Many victims appear healthy with no known heart disease or other risk factors.
  • Sudden cardiac arrest is not the same as a heart attack.
    • Sudden cardiac arrest occurs when electrical impulses in the heart become rapid or chaotic, which causes the heart to suddenly stop beating.
    • A heart attack occurs when the blood supply to part of the heart muscle is blocked. A heart attack may cause cardiac arrest.

WHO CAN YOU SAVE WITH CPR?
The life you save with CPR is mostly likely to be a loved one.

  • Four out of five cardiac arrests happen at home.
  • Statistically speaking, if called on to administer CPR in an emergency, the life you save is likely to be someone at home: a child, a spouse, a parent or a friend.
  • African-Americans are almost twice as likely to experience cardiac arrest at home, work or in another public location than Caucasians, and their survival rates are twice as poor as for Caucasians.

WHY TAKE ACTION?

  • Failure to act in a cardiac emergency can lead to unnecessary deaths.
  • Effective bystander CPR provided immediately after sudden cardiac arrest can double or triple a victim’s chance of survival, but only 32 percent of cardiac arrest victims get CPR from a bystander.
  • Sadly, less than eight percent of people who suffer cardiac arrest outside the hospital survive.
  • The American Heart Association trains more than 12 million people in CPR annually, to equip Americans with the skills they need to perform bystander CPR.

If you are unable to make it to the event or a CPR class, the American Heart Association has put together a short video that will show you how to give CPR by watching a simple one-minute video at heart.org/cpr.

StayingAlive Invitation-15

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