How to Perform Chest Compressions for CPR

Video Transcript

"Hi, my name is Alv Rios and I am a paramedic with Lansing Mercy Ambulance on behalf of Expert Village. In this clip we are going to talk about giving chest compressions. The time that you give chest compressions is after you have determined that your patient is unresponsive, after you have opened the airway, and after you have given your two ventilations, and accessed for a carotid pulse. Once you know that there is no carotid pulse it's now time to begin CPR. You want to make sure that your patient is on a hard surface. If your patient is on a bed or on a couch you want to move them to the floor and lie them supine, which means on their back. By doing this when you are giving your actual chest compressions what your goal is to do is to actually compress the heart and to make it contract by doing that you are using your sternum and your vertebrae in your back to use as braces which are kind of pushing the heart together. If you don't have the amount of hard surface you will just be pushing the body down and not actually compressing the chest. Once you have your patient on a flat surface you want to find your landmark. Your sternum you can see kind of starts where your clavicle is and it ends at what we call the zyphoid process. Which is kind of right here in the crease. Once you locate your sternum you want to find the bottom third, which is usually below the nipple line. You want to use the heel of your hand or your palm and push that right on that location. You then want to interlace your fingers. You want to keep your elbows straight at all times. Keep your back straight. And you want to push down nice and hard. You ideally want to go at least one third of the depth of the patients chest. It's not uncommon during CPR to actually break ribs. It's not a goal and you want to try to prevent it doing it. But just know that if it does happen it is fairly common and it technically does mean you are giving good CPR because you are pushing at the depth needed. You want to do your compressions at a rate of about 100 times a minute pushing nice and deep. That's a good example of about the rate you want to give your compressions. It's important that after 30 compressions that you go to give 2 ventilations again. Try to keep that ratio of 30 compressions for every 2 ventilations after which that's called once cycle. After 2 minutes of those cycles you want to again access for responsiveness and your ABC's including the airway, breathing, and circulation. You do that like we spoke about earlier, opening up the airway, look, listening and feeling for breathing and accessing for the carotid pulse."