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Time	Subject
00:25	Introduction
01:01	The HeartSafe Foundation
05:33	The difference between cardiac arrest and a heart attack
08:27	The importance of CPR
14:29	How to get CPR training
17:19	PulsePoint, AEDs and other tools to improve survival

Theresa Freed 00:00

If you or someone around you had a cardiac emergency, would you know what to do? On this episode we'll learn about the signs and symptoms that someone might be in trouble and how you can help.

Announcer 00:10

Whether you live in or just love Johnson County Kansas, JoCo on the Go has everything Johnson County. Here's what's happening and what's coming up in the community you call home.

Theresa Freed 00:25

Thanks for joining us for JoCo on the Go. I'm your host, Theresa Freed, a Johnson County resident and employee of Johnson County government. A heart attack can strike at any moment, so it's important to be prepared; knowing when to get help and how to rush to help others. Here to talk more about that are Nancy Holland with the HeartSafe Foundation and Melody Morales with the Johnson County Emergency Services Division. Thank you both for being here. Can you talk a little bit about what the HeartSafe Foundation is and what Johnson County's involvement is in that? So Nancy, if you want to start us off with talking about HeartSafe and the Melody you can address Johnson County's involvement,

Nancy Holland 01:01

The Johnson County HeartSafe Foundation is a 501c3 organization located here in Johnson County. And it aims to increase the survival after sudden cardiac arrest through education of CPR and how to use AEDs. And also to increase AED locations throughout Johnson County. There are four main purposes to the organization, like I said, to increase citizens and residents knowing how to perform CPR, knowing where AEDs are and what how to use them. And then we also publicly celebrate bystanders, those great saves. And then we're trying to create an outlet for cardiac arrest survivors and their families.

Theresa Freed 01:46

Alright, perfect. And Melody, if you want to talk about how Johnson County is involved,

Melody Morales 01:49

There are several different fire departments in that act that have groups that participate or members that participate in the group. There's also sheriff, police departments, so several different organizations have volunteers that come and work with the group and they help teach and we'll kind of talk about that I think a little bit later, but they help teach hands-only CPR and just help as needed.

Theresa Freed 02:14

So lots of different Johnson County government departments have a hand in helping with this effort. And so, Nancy, your involvement in this organization is pretty personal. Can you talk about your survival story?

Nancy Holland 02:28

Yes, I actually have a couple of survival stories. I was I got involved with HeartSafe in 2015. Earlier that year, in January of 2015, I had a sudden cardiac arrest that happened in a restaurant in Leawood, Kansas. And fortunately for me, the young restaurant manager knew CPR. So he could jump in and basically keep me viable until the first responders could show up with their AEDs. And it's only because of that restaurant manager and the first responders knowing what they were doing, MED-ACT, and an amazing medical team that I am, I'm here with you today. Sudden cardiac arrest when it happens outside of the hospital, the survival rates are only 10%. And that 10%, over half of those who do survive have irreversible neurological damage. So I realized that I had all the dominoes just lining up perfectly with this cardiac arrest. And something that a lot of people don't understand is that a cardiac arrest and heart attacks are really kind of different. They, the terms are used synonymously a lot. And Melody can certainly explain the medical behind the scenes, but a cardiac arrest. This is how I always kind of explain it to people when I'm doing CPR trainings and that kind of stuff. A cardiac arrest is kind of like the electrical part of your house going down. It's instantaneous. When you lose it, you know, instantaneous, that is a cardiac arrest. A heart attack is similar to the plumbing having issues in your house, you start hearing symptoms, that kind of thing. I not only was fortunate enough to survive a cardiac arrest. I've also survived two heart attacks. And I had two heart attacks in 2018. And once we kind of figured out hey, you know, this woman under the age of 50, has had three major cardiac events. We figured out that I have something called SCAD it spontaneous coronary artery dissection. So I'm, I've hit the lotto three times to be sitting here having this interview with you.

Theresa Freed 04:46

That's amazing. And then of course, we're very happy that you pulled through those events. And I'm glad you made that distinction because I think that is something that not everyone, including myself was aware of between cardiac arrest in heart attack. And so, you know, in a really important part of the discussion is knowing what to look for if trouble is on the horizon. And so with a cardiac arrest, it sounds like it's much more. There may be fewer signs for you to tell if something's going to be happening, but maybe with a heart attack, you can you can see some of that coming down the road. So can you talk about what people should be looking for both as somebody who could potentially survive this incident, but also somebody who might be serving as a bystander?

Melody Morales 05:33

Sure. So I wanted to start out by saying, Nancy did do a good job of explaining the two. But sudden cardiac arrest often happens without any warning signs. So I do want to make that known that honestly, a lot of times there are no warning signs. But when sudden cardiac arrest does it for like Nancy said, there's sudden collapse, there's no pulse, no breathing and loss of consciousness. Sometimes people may have kind of some warning signs or symptoms. And that can include just chest discomfort, heart rate, kind of fast, called palpitations, you can have shortness of breath, weakness. But those are some of the kind of warning signs that may appear prior to cardiac arrest. But again, to emphasize that a lot of times there are no warning signs and you just collapse. So that's why it's really important for people to kind of act quickly when they do see that.

Theresa Freed 06:27

And Nancy, I think I heard you speak at an event a HeartSafe have been a couple of years ago, about your experience in the restaurant, because that kind of reminded me. I think you had you had some of those warning signs. Is that right? While you were eating dinner,

Nancy Holland 06:42

I actually don't remember that day. I think any memories that I kind of have, or you know what I've, you know, had people tell me, but apparently my husband told me that we were eating the salad. The salad had just been served. I took a couple of bites, pushed it over to him and said, I'll be right back. And I don't know if maybe I was feeling bad to leave in the middle, you know, because we were at dinner with some people. So I don't know what maybe I started feeling bad, and was just standing up to get some air go to the restroom? I don't know. But I don't remember that day. Other than I knew I wasn't feeling badly that day. I know, if I had been feeling badly, I wouldn't have been able to run all the errands that I had ran that day, I would have canceled out on dinner if I had been feeling badly. So I do think Melody is accurate. I mean, it just hits I and that's, that's the scary thing is, you know, one minute you think you're okay, and are you waiting for it to happen again. And like Melody said, you just need to act immediately. A lot of people I think are hesitant to get involved because they think well, maybe this person has just fainted. And maybe we shouldn't jump in and start CPR call 911 immediately, maybe they'll revive maybe they just need some air. Maybe they didn't eat today or whatever. Don't hesitate. Immediately call 911 immediately start feeling for the pulse. And if you even if there's just a hesitation that you can't find it, start CPR if it's someone who's passed out from fainting, they'll wake up when when you start the quality CPR, I promise you, but it's better not to lose those crucial moments in the beginning

Theresa Freed 08:22

And melody. Can you talk about how those minutes matter? When we're talking about an event like this?

Melody Morales 08:27

Yes. So like Nancy said, and this is a common statistic that you probably have heard about, but if not, so every minute that goes by without receiving CPR, a person's chance of survival decreases by seven to 10%. So every minute, so every minute counts, and then as well as what she was kind of talking about. So if someone does not have a pulse and is not breathing, the brain only will can last four to six minutes without oxygen. So it's very important that you assess the situation and see if the patient is breathing and has a pulse. And if not begin CPR immediately. And make sure to activate 911 as Nancy said,

Theresa Freed 09:11

Okay, and starting CPR, it sounds very scary and overwhelming. But, you know, I'm a licensed foster parent, and we have to do the regular trainings on CPR. And it's, it's pretty simple. You just have to remember a couple of steps. And then it always helps to have people nearby who can help, you know, remind you of what to do and if somebody is calling 911 The operators on the other end can help with that. But Melody do you want to talk about what those steps are?

Melody Morales 09:40

So if someone collapses, you're gonna kind of jostled him and just make sure say, Hey, are you okay? Or try to at least get them arousable. If they are not, then you and if you're if someone else is with you, then you're going to have them call 911 and you can stay with the patient and try to stay with the patient when you call 911 That's a piece that a lot of people do not do. And the dispatchers for Johnson County, for sure. Once you call them, they will direct you even like you said, someone can help remind you, they'll count for you the compression rate, they'll tell you what you need to be doing next. So activating 911 is for sure, very important. And they will help guide you all along that process. But yes, just making sure that they're awake. If not, then immediately call 911. And you're going to just start putting your two hands on the chest. And between the nipples, a lot of times, it's what they say, it's easier to kind of remember the landmarks, and then just start compressing, compressing. And like I said, dispatch can help guide you on the rate and how fast to do it. And they'll continue to kind of help keep that rate up until 911 arrives.

Theresa Freed 10:50

And the intensity of how hard you need to press is it's pretty heavy. I mean, you could potentially break ribs, but it has to be a fairly hard compression. So can you talk about how many compressions and then what you need to do? Like if you need to switch out if you need a little bit of help there.

Melody Morales 11:07

Yeah, so you want to do 100 compressions in a minute. But again, like I said, you don't even have to get sidetracked with all of that. Because dispatch will help you keep on track with that. But yes, you're doing 100 compressions minute push hard and fast. And a lot of times they say staying alive, the song staying alive, that will help you keep up pretty good rate. So if you can kind of seeing that in your head, that can even help, especially if you aren't on the phone with dispatch. But that can help. And again, with the don't worry about hurting someone, a broken rib, if you do break someone's rib, that is always you recover from that easily. So that is the least of their concerns. CPR is way more important.

Theresa Freed 11:56

Okay, if you don't do it perfectly, something is definitely better than nothing in this situation. Can you show us what the hands look like? Like when you're at your hands?

Melody Morales 12:06

Yeah. So you're going to do one hand, and then a lot of one another hand on top. And you're just going to and you're going to lock your you're going to lock your elbows so that you can get your whole body into the compressions.

Theresa Freed 12:22

It's also important to know that you don't want somebody like on a soft surface when you're doing this, right. So do you need to move somebody if they potentially like this has happened to not on a bed or something like that?

Melody Morales 12:33

Yes. And again, I'm sorry if I keep repeating myself about dispatch, but they do an amazing job of helping get this accomplished for patients. But yes, they'll, if they're on a bed, they'll give you instructions to try to move the patient to the floor, or to a hard surface. Because that actually just makes the compressions more effective. So yes, that's a good point.

Theresa Freed 12:58

And another point to make too, is that CPR looks a little bit different for adults versus children. So you could have say, you know, a toddler who's choking. Can you talk about the difference between helping children and adults?

Melody Morales 13:13

Yeah, so with children, a lot of times their arrest occurred, usually due to some kind of respiratory issue, not always, but frequently, still, hands-only CPR is effective. So continue to do compressions, that's the main thing. And if they are smaller than you may only need to use one hand versus two. And then if it's an infant, this is getting a little bit into the weeds. But however, if you can remember it, it's good. You can use two hands and circle around their chest and press with your thumbs. So that's kind of the difference in infants versus pediatric versus adults.

Theresa Freed 14:02

Gotcha. Seems like a lot to remember. But the good news is there is training available to help people through this and the last training I took was virtual. So you can you don't have to worry about you know, COVID exposure or whatever if you're getting a training. So that's, that's kind of helpful. It's not. I don't want to say it's not as effective. But you know, actually doing that practice is really helpful. So can you both talk about some of the training opportunities that are available to our listeners?

Nancy Holland 14:29

Yes, HeartSafe does some training, themselves, anytime we're requested we’ll come out and train any residents, businesses that are interested in learning CPR, and we work hand in hand with Melody and her team so she can talk a little bit about that.

Melody Morales 14:45

So if anyone is interested in receiving training, you can contact through our website, you can contact us or you can actually you can call a phone number and we will be able to get that scheduled for you. I wanted to say it can, we can do both. So through MED-ACT, actually their employees association, they can do the actual class through AHA. So you can actually get certified. Or if you want to just do hands-only CPR, which is just fine. And then we can also handle that through the foundation, or even through the local fire department, they're also willing to go out and do training as well. So there's a few different options for anyone that's interested.

Nancy Holland 15:32

And I think Melody can also speak to that the hands-only CPR is just as effective as, you know, what we were taught years and years ago with the mouth breathing and resuscitation efforts, the studies are showing that the hands-only CPR can be just as effective.

Theresa Freed 15:47

That's very good to know that things have changed. I think that's, you know, one of the, the intimidation factors for people getting involved is that they don't necessarily want to put their mouth on anybody else. But it's good to know that it's still helpful. And just as effective, it sounds like, doing that. So the trainings that we're talking about are these group trainings, or these individual trainings, or how do, how do people get that.

Melody Morales 16:10

So it can honestly be a mix of whatever is needed, I think group training is probably more effective, especially just trying to get an increase in numbers. It you know any place workplace or whatnot it’s kind of nice to try to get everyone involved - to get trained. However, if one person's looking for training, we can try to figure that out as well. And then I did want to put in a plug that training is a huge piece of the foundation. And as of last year, even regardless of the pandemic, we've trained 10,000 citizens in hands-only CPR. So it's something that we really emphasize and put a lot of importance on.

Theresa Freed 16:51

It is certainly something that's important for anybody to learn how to do. And, you know, the resources that are available here in Johnson County, to get people prepared to be able to help are, are really valuable. The training is one aspect of that, then the 911 dispatchers, that's another aspect of that. But there's also a couple of other things that are available, too. So can you talk about this app that's available once you have the training so that you can rush in and help

Melody Morales 17:19

PulsePoint is the app that she's referring to. So anyone can download the app. And you're able to enable certain alerts that are in the app. And one of those is you acknowledge that you are hands-only CPR trained. And you can enable an alert that if someone has a cardiac arrest that's in a public location, if you're in within a quarter of a mile of that location, it will send you an alert on your phone through the app. And it will direct you to where the person's at. And they will also direct you to the nearest AED. And it will go through the instructions of how to actually apply it and give them the CPR and apply the AED. So it's an excellent resource that the public has to try to help get resources to a patient that may need it.

Theresa Freed 18:07

And so another tool that's really beneficial in these situations is the AED so can you talk about what that is and how the foundation helps get those in the hands of people who need them.

Melody Morales 18:18

So an AED with CPR, doubles or even triples the chance of survival for a cardiac arrest patient. So that's why it is vital to also, not only do CPR, but also if an AED is available to apply the AED. And if it is indicated, it will recommend to you shock the patient. And a lot of people are really nervous about that. Like what if I shock a patient and they don't need it. An AED will tell you if they need it or not. So it'll say shock advised and it walks you through and talks you through what exactly to do so that can also be very intimidating to people. But it does a pretty good job of just talking you through it especially when you are stressed out in a kind of an urgent situation

Nancy Holland 19:04

And HeartSafe does have we have about 38 AEDs right now we've been in the process of placing AEDs in the community around not only Johnson County but in Kansas City as well in areas that normally cannot afford AEDs were fortunate to have this this supply. So anyone who is a not for profit or perhaps is not able to afford an AED on their own. If you come to our website you can apply to get one of these AEDs and while Johnson County is probably above the national average with how many AEDs we have, a lot of these AEDs are behind closed doors when the office shuts down that day at whatever time they're locked behind closed doors, can't get to the AEDs. So we're trying to put into motion these different, they're called SaveStations, they are AEDs that are out for community use. They are climate controlled, they are monitored to make sure that the battery, you know, it's getting the necessary electricity that they're charged, etc. But also, if you do need one of these AEDs out in public, when you pull the AED out of the SaveStation, it immediately calls 911 to your location. So it gets the medical teams, they're the first responders, they're much quicker. So we're in the process of trying to really get those out and about in Johnson County.

Theresa Freed 20:37

That's amazing. Because that does eliminate one very, very important step in the the process. And I don't know about other people. But you know, because I've gone through the CPR training, when I go into a building, even if it's like a grocery store, or my office at work, I try to find those signs up on the wall, where the AED is located. And then I try to visualize at least like once a month if somebody had an emergency, what my steps would be in order to help somebody who was who was having an emergency situation. So those are my maybe not so helpful tips, but I think it's always good to know where those are at.

Nancy Holland 21:15

And I was about to say, I've been in so many CPR trainings. And you ask these groups, does your employer have an AED? And everybody raises their hand. Oh, yeah, yeah, we've got them. Where are they? No clue, you know? Oh, well, I think maybe it's behind the reception desk, or maybe it's in the break room or the kitchen. So it's important for people to know where they're located in case of that emergency.

Theresa Freed 21:42

That's right. And they are so important in those situations. And you don't have to worry about also, you know, doing the compressions and calling 911 and going to get the AED, you know, hopefully there will be people around who you can kind of assign to do these tasks, so you can focus on doing the compressions, because in that moment, that's the most important thing. Right? Alright. I think that's all the questions I have about, about what people can do to help in these emergency situations. And we will, of course, have the links to all these resources that are available to get people started on training. Because, you know, the more people who know what to do in these emergency situations, the better we improve our survival rates, and, and it's very helpful here in Johnson County, is there anything either one of you would like to add?

Melody Morales 22:27

Just that if anyone is interested in even getting involved with the foundation, feel free to reach out and contact us. We'd love to have community engagement involvement from anybody. So if it's something that you kind of think, oh, this might be interesting, or I might like volunteering with this group. Feel free to reach out to us we'd love to have you.

Nancy Holland 22:49

Exactly. We have another meeting coming up on March 2. So anyone who's even remotely interested or just wants to learn a little bit more, they're open to contact melody me or come to our meetings. Perfect.

Theresa Freed 23:00

Well, thank you both for joining me today. And thank you for the great information. I hope it helps somebody who you know, maybe facing a medical emergency but also you know, just lets our listeners feel a little bit more ease. If something happens they can act.

Announcer 23:14

You just heard JoCo on the Go. Join us next time for more everything Johnson County. Have a topic you want to discuss? We want to hear from you. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter at JoCoGov. For more on this podcast visit jocogov.org/podcast. Thanks for listening.