Teaching Hands-Only CPR and How to Use an AED in Emergency Situations to First and Second Year Medical Students

Our medical students, during the pre-clinical years, do not know how to perform CPR. I am the current Vice-President of our Emergency Medicine Interest Group (EMIG) and my classmates have requested a workshop that teaches bystander CPR from our collective group. It is such an essential, life-saving skill, and my classmates have never received any instruction. As such, they are hesitant to help during a cardiac arrest, despite their roles as healthcare professionals in training. A cardiac arrest is an emergency in which the patient dies without immediate intervention. When a cardiac arrest occurs in the out of hospital public setting, it becomes an emergency situation within a crowd. Bystanders to the scene, as the first responders, have an opportunity to save a life with the basic skill of CPR. One mission of our EMIG is to equip our medical student colleagues with the critical skills of managing this type of crisis regardless of their future specialty. Our EMIG intends to conduct a bystander CPR workshop to educate and prepare our medical students while simultaneously promoting leadership skills in the specialty of Emergency Medicine (EM). By offering a highly sought-after workshop, we can expose many of our classmates to EM at the same time we instruct on this critical proficiency. As an Interest Group who specializes in Emergency Medicine, we feel that it is our duty to promote EM through leadership and prepare our colleagues for the integral skills they will need in their careers serving the public.