I am scared to do CPR

[Luna1326]

I am frightened that I won't do it right, or that I will freeze in the middle of someone needing to do it. To clarify, I LOVE being a nurse, I love caring for people, and making their day better or easier, and I know nursing is not all peaches and sunshine. I am an LPN. I am still going to school for RN. But I just wonder if I am enough, or do I know enough. Are my techniques correct, am I doing it EXACTLY like I am supposed to, and I worry I forget things or don't remember every step. I know CPR is not about you, it is about the person you are trying to save. I just am so frightened that something I do will hurt someone instead of saving them, and I so want to do everything right. Otherwise, I feel I have great assessment skills, and seem to do fine at work, and catch things that get over sighted sometimes, and am thorough otherwise. I did well in school, passed my boards the first time. I am just not sure of myself. Does that make me a terrible nurse? Does that mean I shouldn't do this line of work if I am so unsure? I'm not a know-it-all, I just feel I need to constantly be learning, and how to do I make sure I am, constantly refreshing my skills and my knowledge without seeming stupid? I just want to do everything right!

[AZ_LPN_8_26_13]

The compressions look easy when you do them on a mannequin during certification. Wait until you do them on a real person, you will experience exhaustion like never before. I remember aching muscles that I never knew I had.

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Exactly. I've done CPR on people who were coding on two seperate occasions and this was for two minute intervals with people lined up behind me to take over after two minutes. Believe me the two minutes seems like two hours and you get pretty pooped out - and I'm a relatively big guy who's in reasonable shape. As far as getting instructions from the code leader goes, in a situation like that nobody has the time or thought to be offended if someone says "harder" or "faster". The person is coding and dying for cripes sake. In my experience it's usually the bigger and burlier guys who end up doing most of this if it's needed - there are plenty of other jobs that need to be done - someone needs to go get the glucometer and get a BGL on the person - someone needs to run and get the respiratory stuff if it isn't already in the code cart, etc. Sometimes the best thing a person can do is actually stay out of the way if you aren't actually doing something because there's usually a big crush of people there already. Like another poster noted, someone still has to look after and take care of the other patients while this is all going on - the call lights don't stop going off just because someone is coding.

[akulahawkRN, ADN, RN, EMT-P]

First off, the hardest part about doing CPR the first time is making the decision to do it. After that, the rest is pretty automatic. I've done CPR a couple dozen times over the years and ran a few codes. You really just have to decide that your patient needs CPR and that you're the one to provide it. After that, just do it! Just like the commercial says: Push hard and fast in the center of the chest.

Yes, CPR is tiring. Two minutes can seem like a long time. If someone says you need to speed up or push deeper, just do it. If your first CPR is on an elderly person, expect to feel a lot of popping when you start compressions. It's kind of unnerving, really. However, you can't make someone more dead if they're already dead to begin with.

Also, as someone here said, you might want to contact a friendly Paramedic and ask them to help critique your CPR technique or give you pointers about how to do CPR efficiently.

Oh, and nervous is normal. So frightened that you freeze isn't. What's the difference? Your decision to do something.

[NurseOnAMotorcycle, ASN, RN]

Go to 6 minutes in approx to see a decently ran code. Not loud, not chaotic, not a ton of people there, it just gets done.

That is a great video!! Glad they were able to do it.