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During high school, one of my friends on the wrestling team passed away after collapsing during practice.  After that incident, local cardiologists in my town donated an Automatic External Defibrillator (AED) resuscitation device to the school to help avoid such future tragedies. While we were all grateful for this proactive measure, I remember my peers and I being generally unsure about what an AED was or how to operate it. 

Then, last year on Valentine’s Day, undergraduate Aalok Modi passed away after collapsing in Wilson Gym. The fact that two similar tragedies had happened to two of my acquaintances in a span of 4-5 years during the prime of my youth really impacted me. It also made me realize that, even as a pre-med student at Duke, I was not prepared to handle such situations if they were to ever happen in the future. At this point, I was not CPR-certified, and I felt strongly that there was room for improvement in emergency situation preparedness not only for myself, but also among everyone in my age group. To this end, I teamed up with Duke Red Cross and Duke Student Health to develop a system to offer free and convenient CPR/AED courses to students in order to promote emergency situation awareness on campus.

Watch a video about the training.

During the project’s first semester last fall, we more than doubled the number of students who received CPR certifications, as compared to previous semesters. As more students attend training sessions, enthusiasm for this project has gained and awareness has gradually increased.

In order to promote campus-wide training and involvement, we will be holding a large-scale CPR training competition among Greek organizations and selective living groups beginning in February (American Heart Month) sponsored by the Duke Heart Center and the Division of Cardiology at Duke University Medical Center, with awards totaling $5,000. Other plans include working toward installing more Automatic External Defibrillators (AEDs) in high traffic areas on campus and developing an AED marking system.

Ultimately, we hope to develop this into a system whereby every incoming freshmen receives CPR training and have the entire student body trained in four years. It is an area where Duke can distinguish itself, and become a model for other college campuses.

Also, through the Mary Duke Biddle grant, Duke Red Cross has been offering free CPR courses to Durham residents, including courses in Spanish. As we develop our program further, we look forward to enhancing our relationship with the larger Durham community. 

Despite the tremendous advances in other areas of medicine, there is a paucity of progress in emergency response to sudden cardiac death. The Achilles heel of delivering Emergency Cardiac Care (ECC) is the lack of bystanders trained in CPR techniques. Therefore, one of the best aspects of this project is that students trained in CPR will be able to take their life-saving skills with them into the various communities and workplaces they enter upon graduation, thereby greatly strengthening a link in the cardiac Chain of Survival. 

To find out more about CPR training, or to sign up for a training session, click here.