The Full Q&A with a Real-Time CPR Feedback Champion

Medavie Health Services is a national primary health care solutions organization and the largest private provider of EMS management services in Canada. We manage subsidiary companies in the fields of pre-hospital emergency medical services, mobile integrated health, telehealth medical communications, public safety delivery and clinical training, and are proud to be a key Primary Care Paramedic training partner of the Department of National Defense.

Medavie Health Services West汇集了三家西部紧急医疗服务公司（EMS）公司 - 医学博士救护车，监护人救护车和草原EMS。自1976年以来，我们在萨斯卡通的运营就一直存在。

We have a wide range of experience in the company. Just before lunch, one of our medics stopped in to talk to me. He’s got 37 years with us. We’ve also got kids right out of school. It runs the whole gamut.

32 years. I started even before I was an EMT (Emergency Medical Technician) – I took my EMT training shortly after I got here and just moved up. I’ve done everything from EMT, to paramedic, to shift supervisor, to field trainer, to Deputy Chief for Professional Standards now.

当我开始时，公司只有30名员工，所以我们当然彼此认识，并且彼此了解。当您有200个人中的人时，情况会有所改变。它变得不那么个性化。但是我们会做一些事情来解决这个问题 - 每年我们都会度过一个我们所谓的家庭娱​​乐日。[这是一个烧烤和一个有趣的活动，让人们带孩子去。

[37年前在医学博士救护车开始的职业生涯的医生给人留下了深刻的印象 - 他望着出去，看到了三代建筑的三代人，只是度过了愉快的时光。我的其他同事之一 - 他的两个女儿现在在这里工作。显然，我们必须认为，如果我们促进我们的孩子与我们一起工作，这是一个很好的地方。这很普遍 - 我们有很多兄弟，女儿和儿子。

We’re a relatively large organization, so we have the single-start station where every employee comes to begin their shift. But as soon as they’re in an ambulance, they are out of here. They have five other stations around the city.

If we’re quiet enough, that they can actually stop, then we have places for them to be. But, it’s generally pretty busy. It’s not uncommon to have all eleven ambulances out on the streets.

I can only answer that from my department - from the professional development department, or the medical side. We try to shape objectives every year and focus on those. We make improvements, then make those improvements standard, and then find something else to improve the following year.

我们主要集中在过去的三年里一直是我mproving our cardiac arrest statistics. We decided for 2018, we’ll be focusing on sepsis and we’ll put a strong emphasis on training for that.

并不是真正了解产品的价值，我们认为这对我们来说并不是优先事项。我们都接受过心肺复苏术的训练，没有像CPRMeter这样的乐器会为我们提供帮助。

例如，我们有录制的Manikins，我们非常努力地确保这些家伙在课堂上的Manikins表现良好。当时我们真的没有看到产品的价值 - 一旦我们实施了产品，我们就会印象深刻。

Cory (District Manager, Laerdal Medical Canada) was the catalyst behind this whole thing. I don’t know how many times I’ve said it - we wouldn’t be where we are today without him. He kept talking to me and explaining the value of this and kept finding new ways to make me understand that we could do better. He never said that we weren’t doing well, he always just said there were ways we could do better. It’s very rare for salesmen to have that quality – that he can make you feel that you can do something better. I was quite impressed with how he handled it.

科里参加了几天的培训和提供了一个opportunity for the team to demonstrate their abilities in a blinded environment. He was able to show us as first responders, we could only improve. I was going down the path of high-performance CPR anyway and then with Cory doing his part, this was the perfect time to add the feedback.

不是挑战 - 这对我们来说是一个难以置信的机会。我们与消防部门紧密合作，因此我们能够同时将它们暴露于这些地方。他们没有[CPRMeter设备]，但是一旦我们出现，他们就知道该如何处理它们。没有问题，一切对我们来说都是完美的。

Because of the timing being so perfect, it was rolled out to the entire company over the course of four weeks. Everybody got the exact same training over a very short period of time. We were able to get everyone very excited about it.

I was able to use the data that I pulled from Arizona, from Chicago, from Wake County to show them why we were doing all of these things – not just the measurement but the high-performance CPR. It’s tough for people not to be excited about the possibility of improving survival. Once we gave [the EMTs and paramedics] the facts, they were all over it.

They started to realize that they could absolutely become more effective with compressions –especially over an extended period of time. That’s the beauty of these devices – they may have been able to do a CPR class before and rattle off 100% on a manikin for a minute. But when you start doing entire calls and recognize how quickly you tire, that’s when these instruments really shine.

消防部门是一件大事。我认为这是为什么我们的系统如此迅速地改善的很大一部分。我们真的与他们一起买入，时机很完美。他们的所有消防员，PCP（初级保健人员）或EMT每两年与我们一起培训。同样，这是2015年一切发生的确切时间。因此，我们将当天的一个小时纳入[专注于CPRMeter培训]。每个人都必须与其他服务一起培训，以便我们可以了解现场每项服务的期望。

I look at my fire team members as my CPR experts, so I want to leave the manual skill of CPR to the firefighters. That frees up my paramedic staff to look at the overall system.How are things running, what’s the quality of CPR, what sort of advanced skills do we have to be providing?When we can trust that the firefighters can [provide quality CPR], we can focus on the bigger picture.

That’s what we trained on when we trained together. We did scenarios where EMS would arrive on the scene first and fire would arrive on the scene second.我们如何使人们处于适当的位置？如果首先发生火灾，而EMS到达第二，则会发生什么？我们如何使人们扮演正确的角色？我们将其全部放在纸上，以便每个人都确切地知道他们的工作是什么，什么时候该怎么做。

When we put new ambulances on the street, they are part of our standard supplies. We know they’re not going to last forever, so as we need to replace them, we replace them or add them.

CPR feedback must be done flawlessly; with a tool like this you have the opportunity to reach your maximum survival. The way I look at it, I know that there are six more people alive in Saskatoon each year that wouldn’t have been if we hadn’t done this.

我认为这是人们需要听到和have to put it in that perspective. Nothing else that we do in cardiac arrest makes as much of a difference. I’ve been a paramedic for a long, long time, but all of the fancy stuff that I bring to the game doesn’t change anything. What changes things for cardiac arrest is effective CPR and early defibrillation and both of those things can be done by laypeople. If you’re going to do effective CPR, you have to measure it and you have to provide immediate feedback. To me, you’re not doing the job that you can do if you don’t have these devices.

I think that the most important thing is that [your CPR device] is not forgotten. Make sure that it’s taken out of the bag and put on immediately and have someone who just keeps pushing people back to watching [the screen].

There’s a lot going on during these calls – there are a lot of people, a lot of noise, and a lot happening, so it’s easy to get distracted by any number of things. We have to pull [EMTs and paramedics] back and let them know, “your job is to do excellent compressions and you’re only going to do that if you pay attention to the screen”. That’s easy to say, but difficult to do.

I keep coming back to: "how can we keep more people alive or bring more people back?". High Quality CPR is the answer…A lot of it is even trying to change paramedic mindset. Paramedics have many tools at their disposal; IV’s, Intubation, medications, but these tools have never been proven to increase survival from cardiac arrest. One has been proven… and that’s effective CPR.

This is our culture now. We don’t consider doing a cardiac arrest without it. This is part of doing compressions –this is the first thing that comes out and it goes on the chest.

我们在这里有一位出色的员工 - 当他们购买时，他们的购买非常好。团队以惊人的方式采用了[CPRMeter]。