Hundreds of Calvin College employees are receiving life-saving training this week and next, training they hope they never have to use.
Under the guidance of physical education professor Debra Bakker Calvin staff and faculty are learning the basics of rescue breathing and CPR as well learning how to use a new specialized piece of equipment on the Calvin campus.
Calvin has purchased nine automated external defibrillators (AED) and is installing them across its 400-acre campus in such places as the Fine Arts Center, the Chapel, the Spoelhof Center and the Prince Conference Center. Campus Safety vehicles also will house AEDs.
The devices weigh just three pounds but are capable of shocking a still heart back to life. Used in combination with rescue breathing and CPR, Calvin officials hope the AEDs will make the Calvin campus a safe place in an emergency situtation.
Calvin's Pat Buist is the school's environmental health & occupational safety officer. She says the goal for the new AEDs "is to have as many people trained as possible regardless of which building they work in."
She adds: "We each have the ability to learn this skill and I believe that all of us would want to be able to help if we saw someone collapse on campus."
Buist notes that according to the American Heart Association, every year 460,000 deaths arise in the United States from sudden cardiac arrest. A defibrillator is the only known device/technique that stops the chaotic electrical heart activity and allows the heart to re-pace itself to a normal rhythm.
Training began this week in room 262 of the physical education building and will continue next week. There will be sessions on Monday, July 19 from 10 am to noon, Tuesday, July 20 from 2 to 4 pm and Wednesday, July 21 from 9 to 11 am.