Beginner's Guide to Performing CPR

Video Transcript

CAPT. JOE BRUNI: Hi. I'm Captain Joe Bruni, with over three decades of firefighting and emergency medical service experience. What I'm going to cover is a beginning guide to performing CPR. The first step that we want to ensure is when we approach the patient, who may be down and unresponsive, is that the scene is safe. The patient may be down for several reasons that we're unaware of. We want to ensure scene safety so we don't become a victim ourselves. We then want to move to evaluating the patient, to find out if they are truly unresponsive by shake, shouting, and watching for a response. If we get no response, we will move on to evaluating whether the person is really in respiratory and cardiac arrest. To evaluate whether they are in respiratory arrest, we will do a look, listen and feel, near the face to determine whether they are breathing or not, and watching for chest rise at the same time. If the patient is truly in respiratory arrest, we will then prepare to perform the steps of CPR. To reiterate the basic introduction to CPR, we want to ensure scene safety, we want to ensure that the patient is truly unresponsive, and we want to move on to the steps of CPR after we look, listen and feel, to determine if they are in true respiratory and cardiac arrest.