MERT hosted its annual CPR training on Feb. 16.
Credit: Bamelak DukiPenn’s Medical Emergency Response Team hosted its third annual five-minute Hands-Only CPR Training event to celebrate Heart Health Awareness Month.
CPR training locations were available across campus dorms including Gutmann, Harnwell, Harrison, Rodin, King’s Court English, Lauder, and Hill College Houses, among other campus spots such as the Quad, College House at the Radian, Pottruck Health and Fitness Center, Huntsman Hall, 1920 Commons, and Houston Hall. This is the third year that MERT has offered this program and the largest to date, with 697 attendees.
“It was really quite an accomplishment for the team and for what that means for the Penn community and for the people who did this training,” co-community outreach officer for MERT and College sophomore Prerna Kulkarni said.
The training was conducted by MERT emergency medical technicians and is a consolidated version of a typically three-hour formal CPR certification process.
“Having people in MERT who are super excited just make sure that people have access to CPR education is what matters,” College sophomore Ananya Madhira and MERT’s co-CPR officer added.
Raising cardiac arrest awareness and increasing accessible CPR education are cornerstones for MERT’s community engagement initiatives.
“Seeing that, overall in the United States, CPR awareness and CPR competence has been at a low, we wanted to become more aware about pushing forth that CPR education for everyone,” MERT chief and College junior Bilal Elfayoumi said. “We wanted Penn students to become more confident and comfortable to respond to an emergency if they see it.”
Training surveys were administered to track demographics as well as comfort levels to assess the difference in comfortability before and after the training and its effectiveness. There was nearly a 50-50 split between male and female attendees, and participants were also able to select non-binary and “prefer not to say” options. Attendees were also able to express interest in a more formal CPR training with formal CPR officers.
“The purpose for this five-minute training is just to build confidence and being able to do some good compressions at a fast enough rate,” Elfayoumi added. “In this class, participants are taught the basic technique about compressions and how to be useful bystanders should someone around them need CPR.”
The event was held in collaboration with Wellness at Penn, the Undergraduate Assembly, Penn’s Division of Public Safety, the Student Committee on Undergraduate Education, Penn’s College Houses and Academic Services, the Center for Resuscitation Science, and the Mobile CPR Project.
MERT strives to maintain the excellence of this event year after year while looking for ways to grow this initiative, ultimately hoping to create a Philadelphia-wide CPR training.
“I think HOCPR was a really good way to start off the year, and we are looking forward to even more,” Kulkarni said.
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