Lenox Hill Teaches High School Students CPR

Last Thursday, 120 students from three different Upper East Side high schools (St. Jean Baptiste, The Hewitt School and Eleanor Roosevelt High School) attended a workshop hosted by Lenox Hill Hospital on East 77th Street to learn hands-only CPR, follow the chain of survival and operate an AED (Automated External Defibrillator).

According to Lenox Hill, only 8 percent of people who suffer a cardiac arrest survive, leaving 300,000 dead each year. Their goal is to change the paradigm of unnecessary deaths from sudden cardiac arrest (SCA) by educating and empowering students to act during an emergency. Bystander CPR can double or triple survival from cardiac arrest. Currently, only about 30 percent of victims of out-of-hospital sudden cardiac arrest receive any type of CPR. Since most cardiac arrests take place at home, students who are trained can save lives not only at home, they can share techniques and knowledge gained with parents, siblings and other relatives.