Legislation requiring hands on CPR education for all Kentucky high school students has passed out of a senate committee. 17 year old Tanner Demling appeared Wednesday before the Health and Welfare Committee. Two people performed CPR on Demling for 30 minutes when he suffered a sudden cardiac arrest in 2014. Demling believes teenagers will take such instruction seriously. “Yeah I think they will cause it’s easy to learn and its practical to everyday life,” said Demling.
Testifying in support of the legislation was Sylvia Sorrell-Sewell, past president of the American Heart Association of Central Kentucky. “If we train an entire population, which is what we do in schools, we can do what has been done in Denmark, we can do what has been done in Japan; we can double and triple the survival rate of the people who have arrests outside the hospital,” she said.
Currently, students learn about CPR through course work. Sorrell- Sewell says performing the simplified hands only procedure is a big step forward. “The reason children need to learn this in school, or high school teenagers, is that practicing on a manikin is so valuable,” Sorrell-Sewell said. “Would you have someone take drivers ed just from a video? No. Practicing behind the wheel of a car is how we really learn to drive.”
Sorrell-Sewell says hands only CPR is applicable in trauma, overdose, and drowning incidents. She says it’s also used in cases of heart attack.
