A little over a year ago, Comanche County Memorial Hospital changed how they were doing CPR training. Following that change, they got recognized by the American Heart Association for their efforts.
Christopher Reyes, the Performance Improvement Coordinator at CCMH, said to get the “Get With the Guidelines Resuscitation” silver award, they had to meet certain qualifications. Some of those include witnessing a cardiac event, how they monitored it, and how well they’re doing chest compressions. He said they were the only ones in Southwest Oklahoma to receive it.
Last year, staff at CCMH started going through a short CPR training, refresher and practice every three months rather than doing it every two years.
“By doing this every three months,” Reyes said. “We ensure that our providers, our health care staff, have mastery of that CPR skill set, and already, we’re seeing tremendous improvement in our survival to discharge.”
Reyes said the survival rate has almost doubled. He said the health care professionals are more confident after using the Resuscitation Quality Improvement training every quarter. When they use the system, it tells them how they’re doing and if they need to push harder, softer, slower, or faster.
“They have the confidence and reassurance that they’ve done it more often that when there is a code,” he said. “They feel more comfortable and competent in what they’re doing. So before we actually initiated this RQU, we were having staff say that they felt uncomfortable to do a code because it’s been so long between the time that they’ve done the training to when a code blue event took place.”
CCMH recently got a Zoll Defibrillator that lets hospital staff know how they’re doing in real-time when performing CPR on someone.
“And it doesn’t overtax you with information,” Reyes said. “Where if everything is fine, it just lets you know on a little screen how well those chest compressions look. If you’re off on your rate, it lets you know: ‘hey push a little faster.’ If you’re not going deep enough, which is about 2 to 2.4 inches, it says push deeper.”
He said having that extra little voice is nice for whoever is doing chest compressions.
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