Heartstart Schools

Heart attacks are one of the leading causes of death in the United Kingdom. The Heartstart initiative is a program in the U.K. that encourages people to create training programs that teach people how to perform CPR. Some of these program are conducted in schools, since children as young as ten can learn to do CPR. There are several skills that these programs teach.

Assessment

• One of the things that are taught to students is how to access the condition of a person. They need to know how to determine what type of action they need to do, if if no action is needed, since performing CPR on someone who does not need it can actually harm them. They also need to know how to clam someone if they are still conscious, as well as how to themselves behave so as to not cause panic.

Clear Airways

• Another vital skill that is taught to students in a Heartstart program is how to check to see if the person they are helping has a clear airway and how to clear it if they do not. This is because if a person performs CPR on someone with an obstructed airway, the process might be ineffective or not effective all.

Bleeding

• Often a person who needs CPR might be involved in an accident that cause them to have other injuries. For this reason, the students needed to know how to deal with bleeding. Part of this training teaches how to staunch the bleeding and part addresses protecting yourself in case the victim has a communicable disease.

CPR

• The final and central part of the training is teaching the students how to perform the CPR itself. This can be intimidating, since the student is essentially taking someone life in their hands. It is vital to have either a practice dummy or other simulator that lets the student get an idea of how it supposed to actually feel, since a verbal description might be inadequate. Each student should practice the compressions and the breaths.