CPR – How to do cardiopulmonary resuscitation

If a person falls to ground right next to you, what should you do? Follow this guideline, but remember that it is for adults only and in children the procedure is different.

1) Check their breath by approaching your ear to their mouth.  Can you feel them breathing? Do you hear them breathing? Can you see their chest going up and down as they breathe? If the answer to all of these is no proceed to step 2.

2) Do mouth to mouth breathing. With one hand close their nose and pull their head back to open their mouth. With the other hand check if there is nothing obstructing their airways, including their tongue. Then inhale, put your mouth on theirs, and exhale for 3 seconds. Wait 3 seconds and repeat. If the person was involved in an accident the procedure is different. In that case, just don’t do mouth to mouth nor move the person in any way, or they may become paraplegic (this is not the standard procedure, and if you want to learn what to do in this type of situation, you should take a CPR course).

3) Check their pulse. The best place to feel is in the neck, but you can double check in the arm. If you can’t feel it, proceed to step 4. If you can, call 911 and continue to do mouth-to-mouth.

4) Intertwine your fingers and with your hands down placed on their sternum make 30 heart massages. Use your whole body to do the pressure, not just your arms. It is about the same pressure it would take to bend a watermelon without breaking it. But don’t worry about breaking their ribs – it is best to have a few broken ribs than to have no heartbeat at all.

5) Do more 2 mouth to mouth's and then another cycle of 30 heart massages until you did 4 cycles.

6) Call 911.

7) Continue doing 2 mouth-to-mouths and 30 massages until the person wakes up or the ambulance arrives. When the paramedics arrive, tell them how many cycles you did and state that you did 30 massages in each, because guidelines keep changing and you need to make sure you are all on the same page.

The most important thing, as with any emergency, is not to panic.