A friend sent me a link to night to a website/blog I really enjoy – Fire Dept Chronicles that posted a video about this study – https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.03.09.21253220v1 on Foot CPR.

Their Youtube video blog is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYvi-YU8xoM

So some of you know, my background is Fire/EMS. I was a call FF/EMT-I for about 15 years. I only left and let most of my certs lapse when our family was growing and my FF husband and I decided that having 2 of us in hazardous occupations wasn’t probably the best with little children at home. And over 20 years later we have 4 kids, those initial littles are in college, and I’m super happy running at Training Center teaching CPR and First Aid.

When my son was 2 or 3 he liked jumping up and down on my mankins. Would that be foot CPR?

And I would be honored to do CPR on someone who needs it. But I can’t imagine doing it by stepping on their chest with the heel of my foot. I can’t imagine the damage my students would do to my high-tech QCPR Bluetooth manikins nor do I want to think about the damage a misplaced heel would cause on a human chest.

Yes, we’re in a pandemic folks. A respiratory-based pandemic. Which means I’m not doing mouth to mouth or using a barrier sheet. I might be doing Hands Only CPR. And that’s the key name for what I’ll be doing … HANDS only CPR. I won’t step on your family member, loved one, or friend, (or enemy, or evil neighbor in case you’re asking). I’ll be using my hands while my custom-sewed cotton mask that I made is firmly on my face. I’ll be doing my darndest to try to save them – safely. My Training Center Motto is Safely Teaching Safety and I employ that in almost everything I do. I don’t take unnecessary risks and I can’t imagine the potential liabilities in Foot CPR.

Maybe this study was a joke and I missed it somewhere, the post did say it was not peer reviewed or evaluated. I suppose it falls under “Pandemic safe ideas that have not been thought through by gathering insight from providers who would be doing CPR in the middle of a respiratory-based Pandemic like COVID-19”. Or possibly “How do we provide guidance to thousands of CPR and BLS instructors nation-wide to teach providers and lay responders to balance on one-foot while doing compressions with the heel of their other foot”. I do think there should be follow up training to treat injuries caused when said rescuers fall over when they can’t effectively balance on one foot while compressing with another, but I probably digress here. My own potential balance issues are not addressed in the bigger picture of this study.

So snark aside (yes, I’m being snarky if you didn’t figure that out already), CPR is not done with our feet. And until the American Heart Association or ILCOR (International Liaison Committee on Rescusitation) comes out with guidance, I’ll keep teaching according to the new 2020 Guidelines, which call for me to use my hands.

Foot CPR
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