July 17, 201114 yr I was passing through and thought that I would lend some clarity to this. One, not all police in the United States are EMT trained, in fact, very few are. Typically the only police that recieve actual EMT training (at the NREMT standard) tactical teams, resident law enforcement officer, police officers serving as flight officers on helicopter units (who recieve paramedic training on occasion), boat/marine units, or police officers that are part of a combined "Department of Public Safety" in which all sworn personnel are trained as both police officers and firefighters (e.g. Sunnyvale CA). Secondly, CPR has an NEAR ZERO chance of converting a lethal cardiac dysrythmia. "Cardiac Arrest" is when the heart muscle ceases to be able to efficiently circulate blood. This is most commonly caused by a lethal rhythm called ventricular fibrillation with is essentially the disorganized quivering of the lower chambers of the heart. No matter what the root cause of vfib is, cannot be converted without the introduction of electricity to sort've "restart" the heart's electrical system. Mechanical compressions (the core aspect of CPR) will not convert an electrical rhythm in the heart. Ever. The can lengthen the amount of time someone's brain and heart can survive without a heartbeat, sometimes quite significantly, but the only way to "bring someone back" from cardiac arrest is defibrillation. Current survival rates are all over the place, but with early intervention and good CPR certain communities are seeing survival rates in the 30 and 40%, sometimes higher, but this is only counting witnessed arrest where the lethal rythym was shockable (one where a defibrillator would be effective, there are some, such as the notorious "flatline", that are not shockable). Also factor in that survival rates are measured very differently. Some measure anyone who regains a pulse, some measure those who survive until they reach the hospital, some to 24, and yet others until hospital discharge or beyond. So no one statistic is definate, greatly depending on the area and the methods of measurement. Also, there are tons of non-EMS agencies that carry defibrillators. Manual defibrillators are $65k pieces of equiptment only appropriate for use by a paramedic or in a hospital, but much cheaper $1,500 or so Automatic defibrillators (AEDs) are increasingly common. They're found in various public areas, as well as being carried by many non-paramedic public safety entities such as police, fire, park services etc. NYPD's AED pilot program has been in use since 1997. AEDs are about 90% as effective as a trained paramedic wih a manual defibrillator.
July 17, 201114 yr Agreed, LEOs are not mandated to be certified as an EMT-B. Some may recieve certification at the First responder level, I think the Fire colleges call it EMC certification... Many agencies have SOPs which prefer Officers to provide only life-saving care. However, lots of departments are having their Officers certified in Adult, Child, Infant CPR and Adult, Child AED. AEDs are relatively inexpensive and I can say from personal experience that they save many lives. I had heard that one city, maybe Buffalo, has AED's on many street corners as they provide voice commands and are easy to use without experience. The AEDs are housed in a container and once they are accessed a direct line of communication is setup between the dispatchers and the person using the AED. It's kinda like those Police Call boxes you see at Universitys except they now have AEDs!
