Honors College Junior Launches CPR Training Initiative

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Posted on October 31, 2024

Kasey Langley

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Each year, communities across the United States take a stand against heart disease by promoting a healthy heart lifestyle at Heart Walk fundraisers led by the American Heart Association. The 2024 Mobile Heart Walk will take place at the University of South Alabama on Nov. 2 at 650 Clinic Drive.

This fall, students at South have been taking steps to educate the campus community on healthy living and the proper techniques of bystander cardiac arrest care.

According to the American Heart Association, approximately 350,000 people die every year from cardiac arrest in the United States.

Suhas Patil and his peers in the Honors College and Alpha Epsilon Delta, a national health preprofessional honor society, are working to decrease that number through a bystander CPR training program for new students. Bystander CPR is performed by an individual who is not a part of an organized emergency response system to a cardiac arrest.

The percentage of people who actually receive bystander CPR ranges from 35% to 45% globally, according to the American Heart Association. People often do not intervene because they do not know what to do.

“According to the AHA, bystander intervention has been shown to increase survival by two to three times,” Patil said.

The CPR Initiative started by Patil is a campus-wide, student-led project that aims to educate and train all incoming freshmen in hands-only CPR and automated external defibrillators, or AED, use. A group of CPR-certified student volunteers serve as facilitators using American Heart Association course materials.

Patil, a junior biomedical sciences student and director of the CPR Initiative, began his journey at South differently than most pre-med students. He jumped right into patient care during his freshman year through coursework and training in emergency medical services.

Now, while tackling his upper-level classes and preparing for the Medical College Admission Test in January, he manages to complete at least one 24-hour shift each week as an advanced emergency medical technician in Baldwin County.

“I have almost 2,200 clinical hours of direct patient care where I am entirely responsible for the patient,” Patil said.

The idea for the CPR Initiative came about in February when Patil began planning his honors thesis. He wanted to create something that is clinically relevant to his major.

During his research, he discovered a program at the University of Pennsylvania where all student athletes were required to complete CPR training in an effort to prevent cardiac arrests during athletic competitions. He used that program as inspiration for the CPR Initiative.

Already in its first semester, the CPR Initiative has trained more than 450 students on campus through small and large group sessions. As more student organizations get involved, Patil hopes it will become an initiative that is adopted by programs and colleges across campus.

Dr. Doug Marshall, dean of the Honors College, is excited to see the initiative become one of the Honors College’s signature service projects.

“Everyone thinks of honors mentorships as research projects, but Suhas’s initiative is a great example of a different, but just as valid, alternative — a practical project that can make a real difference in our community,” Marshall said. “The Honors College is proud to take on the responsibility of institutionalizing the tradition of CPR training for first-year students, and carrying the tradition into the future.”

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