Published
Another thing to keep in mind is that unless it is in a hospital setting, it is important to initiate emergency services quickly - in most cases it takes more than just CPR to resusitate someone. Also, in some settings, very limited personnel and/ or not all essential equipment are immediately available. So, doing CPR on the arm makes the infant portable - allowing the rescuer to both provide care to the infant AND initiate further emergency help (911, emergency procedure for facility etc).
I have done CPR on infants too many times to count throughout my career. The latest one for carrying the infant and CPR was meeting the parents at the ED door. The mother gave a couple of quick breaths and I continued compressions in my arm a short distance to the resuscitation room. The infant had been deemed a high risk and both parents were taught CPR including how to get closer to a phone by carrying the baby at discharge from the nursery. It may not be the most ideal method for effective compressions but sometimes to get help quickly, you gotta do what you can.
everthesame, LPN, LVN
188 Posts
I currently work in corrections and the annual CPR course they teach at my facility is not certified by AHA or American Red Cross. It is from the American Safety and Health Institute.
Anyway, while teaching the infant CPR portion, the instructor said you can perform CPR on an infant while carrying it on your arm. Since I was coming off of a long stretch of work nights and the course was during the day, I assumed my sleep-deprived self heard wrong. Later during the demonstration check-off one of my co-workers was having a hard time getting the infant dummy's chest to rise. She was having difficulty bending over the table due to a recent surgery. The instructor decided that this was the perfect time to reiterate the fact the you can perform infant CPR while holding the baby on your arm, head toward the crook of the elbow. Of course, my co-worker couldn't deliver effective breaths while holding the baby because it was impossible for her to correctly position the airway while holding the baby like that.
Did I miss something? When did they start teaching this technique? I thought I was going to fail the infant check off because I disagreed with this technique. In the past I have worked in newborn nurseries and in a NICU. I just find it hard to believe that this is an acceptable technique and I ruffled a few feathers when I politely tried to explain this to the instructor.
Has anyone out there heard of this before?