Event in Belcamp teaches participants how to administer CPR, use an AED and stop uncontrolled bleeding
In recognition of CPR and AED Awareness Week, University of Maryland Upper Chesapeake Health (UM UCH) will hold a Compress & Shock Training on Saturday, June 3, at the University of Maryland Upper Chesapeake Health Brass Mill Conference Center, 1369 Brass Mill Road, Suite M, in Belcamp. Three training sessions, at 9 a.m., 11 a.m. and 1 p.m., will be offered.
The training is being held in conjunction with the Compress & Shock Foundation, a nonprofit that works to bring free and equitable access to CPR and automated external defibrillator (AED) education to all communities with a specific dedication to those communities most adversely affected by cardiac arrest due to race, ethnicity, primary language or access to health care education.
In addition, Stop the Bleed Training will also take place that day. Like those suffering cardiac arrest, individuals experiencing uncontrolled bleeding can die quickly without assistance. Stop the Bleed Training teaches participants key bleeding-control techniques, including how to use their hands, dressings and tourniquets, to help save a life while waiting for a medical response.
The Compress & Shock Training, which takes about 1.5 hours, is specifically designed for the general public to learn how to save a life during a cardiac arrest. Educators will be on site to provide hands-on instruction on how to administer CPR and how to use an AED. Participants will learn about common barriers to bystander intervention and how to recognize cardiac arrest and differentiate it from a heart attack. The goal is to teach participants how to keep someone alive who is undergoing cardiac arrest until medical assistance arrives.
At the start of each Compress & Shock Training session, Patrice Bullock, the mother of Bailey Bullock, a student at The John Carroll School who died in May 2021 of cardiac arrest at a high school track and field practice in Bel Air, will share her son’s story. After his passing, Bullock founded Bailey’s Heart and Soul Foundation to raise funds to purchase AEDs to make them more readily available at locations in Harford County.
“There is such a need in the community for people to know how to administer CPR, how to use an AED and how to stop uncontrolled bleeding. These trainings will save lives,” said Vickie Ensor Bands, Director, Community Outreach and Health Improvement, UM UCH. “We plan to offer trainings like this one several times a year. The more people who know these life-saving techniques, the better our community will be.”
According to the Compress & Shock Foundation, approximately 350,000 people experience cardiac arrest outside a hospital setting each year, and the survival rate is less than 10 percent. In addition, a study in the October 2022 New England Journal of Medicine found disparities among people of color when it comes to administering to those in cardiac arrest. The June 3 Compress & Shock Training is a way to teach community members how to administer CPR and use an AED in an emergency.
The June 3 trainings are designed for adults and children ages 9 and up and is ideal for a family to participate in together. It is possible to attend both trainings by signing up for two of the three times offered. To register for the trainings, call 800-515-0044. Participants may also sign up on site the morning of June 3. For more information, visit umms.org/uch.
About University of Maryland Upper Chesapeake Health
University of Maryland Upper Chesapeake Health, part of the University of Maryland Medical System, includes the University of Maryland Upper Chesapeake Medical Center and the Patricia D. and M. Scot Kaufman Cancer Center on its Bel Air campus. Most recently, it opened The Klein Family Harford Crisis Center in Bel Air offering services for behavioral health. The Senator Bob Hooper House in Forest Hill is an assisted living facility that specializes in hospice. The University of Maryland Harford Memorial Hospital has been operating in the community for over a century and is located in Havre de Grace. The leading health care system and the second largest private employer in Harford County, UM Upper Chesapeake Health offers a broad range of health care services, specialty care, technology and facilities to the residents of northeastern Maryland. Visit www.umms.org/uch for more information.
About the University of Maryland Medical System
The University of Maryland Medical System (UMMS) is an academic private health system, focused on delivering compassionate, high quality care and putting discovery and innovation into practice at the bedside. Partnering with the University of Maryland School of Medicine and University of Maryland, Baltimore who educate the state’s future health care professionals, UMMS is an integrated network of care, delivering 25 percent of all hospital care in urban, suburban and rural communities across the state of Maryland. UMMS puts academic medicine within reach through primary and specialty care delivered at 11 hospitals, including the flagship University of Maryland Medical Center, the System’s anchor institution in downtown Baltimore, as well as through a network of University of Maryland Urgent Care centers and more than 150 other locations in 13 counties. For more information, visit www.umms.org.