By EMS1 Staff
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) launched a new telecommunication and high-performance CPR toolkit initiative in an effort increase national cardiac arrest survival rates from 10%.
The initiative, CPR LifeLinks, was created in response to the Institute of Medicine’s 2015 report, “Strategies to Improve Cardiac Arrest Survival: A Time to Act,” which stated that more than 250,00 people experience out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA). The study found that telecommunicator CPR and CPR programs nationwide can decrease the number of deaths.
The toolkit includes resources such as videos and training materials.
“The research clearly shows that the impact of interventions early after a cardiac arrest are the most important,” Ben Bobrow, doctor and CPR LifeLinks project lead, said. “This underscores why 911 and EMS systems are the most crucial parts of the chain of survival.”
The CPR LifeLinks program’s objectives include best practice recommendations for performing Telecommunicator CPR and defining best practice recommendations for EMS personnel that perform High-Performance CPR.
The toolkit was developed by two working committees and includes scientific information on cardiac arrest, engaging leadership support for improving CPR programs, recommendations on how to train and improve training and 911 video and audio recordings for training.