SAN ANTONIO — Performing CPR on someone can be scary, especially if you've never done it before. But an exhibit at the Witte Museum hopes to change that.
It is a hands-only CPR kiosk sponsored by Methodist Healthcare Ministries of South Texas at the Witte. By teaching CPR without mouth-to-mouth, the goal is to teach, but also take some of the anxiety of CPR out and save more lives.
Jordan Mendez, the Health Strategy Specialist, American Heart Association of South Texas told us, "I have tons of questions every time I do trainings about...What about the mouth to mouth? And there are certain situations where that is called for. However, our message here at the AHA is hands-only CPR."
The bystander CPR rate is the number of people that step in to give CPR despite not being a part of an emergency response team. In 2020, the rate in San Antonio was just 36.8%, well below the national average of 45%. Women receive CPR at an even lower rate compared to men. Mendez added, Mendez: "A lot of the things we hear are men are concerned about sexual assault allegations. They're afraid to hurt the women. Inappropriate touching there."
About one out of 10 who suffer cardiac arrests out of the hospital survive. seven out of 10 cardiac arrests occur in the home. The chance of survival decreases by 10% every minute that passes without CPR being administered. And 70% of people don't know CPR or their CPR training has lapsed.
And if you're nervous about hurting someone while administering Mendez says, "Good Samaritan laws are protecting you if those are your concerns. So everybody needs CPR no matter the gender, the race, ethnicity doesn't matter. We all need CPR. We are really grateful to the Witte Museum for having this CPR kiosk here. It is the number one most visited CPR kiosk in the nation so it is training a lot of people and there's really great access here."