GENEVA — Patiently waiting for directions from a digital teacher, Amber Slaviero leaned over a plastic “victim” and took a deep breath, prepared to save a life.
Slaviero, 14, and 60 other Geneva Middle School eighth-grade home economics students learned life-saving Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation Monday afternoon, courtesy of the KEN Heart Foundation and UH-Geneva Medical Center.
“The foundation purchased the CPR training system for the hospital with the understanding that hospital employees provide the training,” KEN Heart founder Linette Derminer said. “So far, the balance between our support and the hospital’s staff has been perfect. It is a good match.”
Derminer founded the KEN Heart Foundation after her son, Geneva High School student Ken Derminer, died of sudden cardiac arrest in 2001. The foundation’s goal is to prevent sudden cardiac arrest from occurring in youth and athletes and raise awareness by providing automatic external defibrillators (AEDs)— portable electric shock devices that restore a proper heart rhythm — to local organizations and locations. The foundation has provided two AEDs to the middle school.
Nurses Lori Slimmer and Lori Kingston taught the classes, which included a three-minute instructional video and some one-on-one CPR experience with CPR mannequins and a training AED. The training AED cannot generate an electric shock but takes the students through the CPR process, including unblocking airways and compressing the victim’s chest for two minutes.
Mazda Aviles, 14, has four younger brothers and thinks her CPR training could help if one weren’t breathing.
“They get into a lot of trouble. So I think if they needed me, I would be able to do CPR on them,” she said.
Tiffani Roddick, 14, said doing CPR is a lot harder than watching someone do CPR.
“It is definitely harder to do than I thought,” she said. “The chest compressions took a lot of energy.”
For more information on the foundation, sudden cardiac arrest prevention, or AED units, visit www.kenheart.org. More information on heart defects and support for parents who have lost a child to sudden cardiac arrest can be found at www.parentheartwatch.org and www.ncpn.org.
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Geneva students learn how to save a life
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