<meone had immediate symptoms of a heart attack or sudden cardiac arrest, would the average Carleton student, staff or faculty member know how to react?
With eight Automated External Deliberators installed around campus this winter, a dedicated student has been able to start the second phase of his plan to educate Carleton about how to react in an emergency situation where CPR is needed.
“We’ve created an AED policy that has outlined responsibilities [in case of an emergency],” said Elisabeth Haase, Carleton’s environmental health and safety compliance manager, who is officially in charge of the project. “We also want to send all of our faculty and staff to get trained on how to use each AED.”
Over spring break, Ivan Duong ’14, a pre-med EMT, was able to start teaching some of Carleton’s faculty how to use the devices, with help from the Northfield EMS Explorers unit and Northfield Hospital EMS.
“We got over twenty faculty and staff at each of our four sessions,” Duong said of the program, sponsored by Take Heart Minnesota.
The short albeit comprehensive courses didn’t just teach how to use each AED; they also showed proper hand-to-chest compression techniques. The main goal was not solely to know how to operate machines, but also how to perform accurate and successful CPR in case there are no AEDs within the vicinity.
“There was more demand for the training than we anticipated,” said Haase. “We didn’t think we could get 20 people to come, but we ended up filling the entire room.”
The next step is to educate the whole campus.
“Our new goal is to train all incoming freshmen of 2012, during New Student week, in addition to all of our faculty and staff,” Haase said.
In the meantime, more AED training sessions will be held in May and open to all faculty and staff, in case some missed the spring break sessions. Over the next year, the training will also open up to all students on campus.
“The really cool thing about these sessions has been the response from Carleton faculty and staff,” Haase said. “To have people say ‘thank you for the training’ is so positive and helpful.”