For the Love of Health

Pulse Check: The Importance of CPR with Jennifer Oldham

• ChristianaCare • Season 3 • Episode 4

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According to the American Heart Association, cardiac arrest claims more lives globally than colorectal cancer, breast cancer, prostate cancer, influenza, pneumonia, auto accidents, HIV, firearms, and house fires combined.

But if an emergency happens near you where someone needs CPR, would you be prepared? On this episode of For the Love of Health, we’re joined by Jennifer Oldham, cardiovascular quality and innovation nurse program manager at ChristianaCare.  Jennifer tells us why CPR is so vital during the first few moments after cardiac arrest, provides guidelines and tips on how to perform CPR, and talks about life-saving measures that we all should take, be it to help others or ourselves. 

Don’t be caught unprepared if you find yourself in a situation where someone has lost consciousness and stopped breathing. Listen now for an episode that could truly save a life.

 

Jennifer Oldham, MSN, RN, CEN, is a cardiovascular quality and innovation nurse program manager at ChristianaCare’s Center for Heart & Vascular Health. Jennifer has dedicated the last three decades to teaching others about harnessing the power of CPR to save patients and loved ones.

 

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The Vital Importance of CPR

Speaker 1

So your brain can die, all of your organs can die. Essentially, you are dead without your heart beating.

Speaker 2

You're listening to For the Love of Health, a podcast about delivering care and creating health, brought to you by Christiana Care. Hello everyone, I'm Jason Tokarski.

Speaker 3

And I'm Megan McGuhrman. Welcome to For the Love of Health brought to you by Christiana Care.

Speaker 2

According to the American Heart Association, globally cardiac arrests claim more lives than colorectal cancer, breast cancer, prostate cancer, influenza, pneumonia, auto accidents, hiv, firearms and house fires combined.

Speaker 3

Wow. Cpr, especially if administered immediately after cardiac arrest, can double or triple a person's chance of survival. But could you administer CPR if you were called upon to do it? Joining us to break down the importance of CPR is Jen Oldham, cardiovascular Quality and Innovation, nurse Program Manager at Christiana Care Center for Heart and Vascular Health. Jen, thanks so much for being here. Thank you for having me. Can you walk us through those first critical minutes when someone is having a cardiac arrest and explain why CPR is so vital in those moments?

Speaker 1

Absolutely Well. Your heart is a pump and so it pumps oxygenated blood around your body to get to all of your tissues, all of your organs, and make sure that your metabolism is going and your brain is active and your kidneys are functioning, your liver, everything that is working appropriately. So when your heart stops, you're no longer pumping blood, so therefore you're not getting that good oxygenated blood flow to your organs and your vessels. So your brain can die, all of your organs can die. Essentially, you are dead without your heart beating.

Speaker 2

There are probably a lot of misconceptions about CPR when to do it, how to do it and everything and, just in general, fear of oh God, am I going to do something wrong and hurt somebody. What are some of those misconceptions and how do we get past those fears for people?

Speaker 1

Absolutely Well. Education is the key to everything unknown. Right, there are a ton of misconceptions. I've been doing early heart attack education for a variety of local businesses and all kinds of organizations that reach out and want it. One of the biggest misconceptions that I find going out into the field is that men won't end up doing CPR because they're afraid of touching a woman. I try to break it down and make it as friendly as possible for people who have that misconception that they're you know that they're going to, you know be touching someone, but at the end of the day, that's where the heart is. It's underneath of the chest and underneath of the breastbone, and so there is anatomy there for all of us. It's not just one kind of person.

Speaker 1

Another huge misconception, I think, is that they're going to hurt someone. But this is very frank. It's probably the emergency department coming out in me. But you can't hurt dead. Dead is dead, and so if you don't push hard and fast in the center of the chest, you're not going to circulate blood, and so bones will break, ribs will crack, maybe you have displacement of cartilage. It's uncomfortable but it has to happen. Broken bones and broken cartilage can be mended. Once you're dead, you're dead, and so we encourage everyone to do CPR, no matter how much they think it's going to hurt someone hard and fast in the center of the chest is what needs to happen.

Speaker 2

And maybe because of so many TV shows that we've been watching, a lot of people just automatically assume that the mouth-to-mouth is part of that as well. It seems like that's not quite the priority anymore to the CPR process. Is that correct?

Speaker 1

That is correct. Initially when CPR started it was airway breathing circulation. So correct, initially when CPR started it was airway breathing circulation. So they thought initially that airway was the most important portion of CPR and within the past like 15 years it's really moved to circulation and then airway and breathing. So it's a bit of a change. But honestly, like you have oxygen in your blood regardless of if you're breathing or not. It's less than if you were breathing, but it's still there and it's still effective to circulate that oxygen around, to just push first. So you do not need to do mouth to mouth at this time, especially with hands-only CPR. So people who don't have specialized training with like BLS or ACLS, the basic CPR which is hands-only CPR, is just circulating blood, like just using the heart as a pump, as it's intended to be, and I know with hands-only CPR and the original version of CPR there are songs you can sing to make this kind of as easy for someone as possible.

Speaker 3

So if someone is listening to this and has never been certified in CPR would have no idea where to start. What are some of those easy tips we can share with them right now that makes them feel a little bit more comfortable about it?

Speaker 1

Well, the one that American Heart Association has touted forever is the Bee Gees staying alive, right, but if you have an audience that's younger than 25, they probably don't know who the Bee Gees are. So when I go out to like elementary schools and I get that Gen Z, gen Alpha audience, baby Shark is 100 to 120 beats a minute. So as obnoxious as that song is, it's actually very effective, especially for younger people, to kind of call a cadence into their head and be able to give the right compression rate.

CPR Innovations and Accessibility

Speaker 2

We've talked about some very recent things to make it a little more accessible, a little easier to work with, be it the songs that we're using or removing mouth-to-mouth from the process here. What other innovations are making it more accessible and easier for people to get involved with this?

Speaker 1

Sure so well. There's AED programs. So a lot of businesses have that automated external defibrillator right. So the shock that your heart needs when it goes into a lethal rhythm. If you call 911 in Delaware, our 911 dispatchers have like a log of where all of the AEDs are in the surrounding area. So say, if you picked up the phone right now because I had a cardiac arrest and you needed an AED, you call 911. They're going to say, oh, there's an AED wherever the AED is here in the building. Aeds are pretty widely available and actually within my job and with our accreditations that we have for cardiology, we actually assist small businesses getting AEDs if they'd like them. So I have a ton of resources if anyone's interested for that.

Speaker 1

Besides the AEDs, there's a big initiative within the American Heart Association and the American College of Cardiology that pushes knowing CPR. There is movement all over the country. Delaware was tagged as one of those states to take up the initiative of educating our high school students on CPR, but I think it needs to be introduced way before high school. This is definitely something I like to do in elementary school, because kids in elementary school probably have younger sibling or younger nephew or niece or someone in their neighborhood and so babies put things in their mouth A lot of times. Your young kids are the first ones to notice that a baby's choking. So just getting the word out about early heart attack care, about hands-only CPR, it's a huge push.

Speaker 1

Certainly there are devices that can help with that. There's anti-choking devices that they have that's readily available. I can't say that I've ever used one, but I do know that they exist. They have the to-go breathing bag. So if you don't feel comfortable putting your mouth on someone, you don't have to, but obviously, if you wanted to, they have those barrier masks that are readily. You can get them for like $8 on Amazon, right? So those are available. And then they also have they're firehouses and even some, I believe law enforcement might carry them as well, but it's BLS-trained professionals that they strap onto a person so that whoever else is taking care of that patient can open themselves up to administering medications or intubating the patient or making the necessary treatments, establishing IVs, pushing fluids, things like that. So they've come a long way with technology.

Speaker 2

I want to circle back a little bit to you. Having said that, you're training kids in elementary school for CPR. My kids are a little older. At this point One's a senior in high school, one's in college. I don't recall them ever being offered that opportunity when they were that young and kind of actually surprises me a little bit. I never thought about like an eight-year-old being able to perform CPR. Is that really something that you're working on at this point? Is getting them that young, that into it?

Speaker 1

Absolutely. I would love to partner with any of our elementary schools to get CPR in there. I know that our high schoolers definitely get CPR training. However, it's a lot of times that the younger kids are watching their younger siblings and we know that babies put everything in their mouth. That's how they learn about their world. Giving them a little bit of training, not necessarily like a BLS level or even like a heart saver level, just that. This is how to do hands-only CPR. This is when to get an adult involved. This is how to call 911. This is how to talk to the paramedic when they arrive.

Speaker 1

I think are important points. They're pliable and they can remember and they can be assisting. You know, I mean, how many grandparents watch their eight, nine, 10 year old children and might have an event that that eight, nine or 10, or even like three or four year old might need to know how to, you know, not necessarily perform CPR, but call for help. It's very valuable. So, yeah, I would encourage any elementary school. I would be happy to partner like get your school nurse involved, because I'm sure that they have the same level of expertise, right, Like they can totally do a CPR curriculum and introduce it in baby steps, bite-sized pieces that elementary kids could digest.

Teaching CPR to Children

Speaker 3

Jen, you were recently honored by the American Heart Association at Delaware's Heart Ball. Congratulations, thank you. Talk to us about your work at ChristianaCare.

Speaker 1

Sure. So I took this role that I have now a little over nine years ago and at that time we had started going through accreditation moves to be accredited with the American College of Cardiology and so one of the major pushes that we needed to kind of firm up before we could accredit was early heart attack care and hands-only CPR. A credit was early heart attack care and hands-only CPR and so I mean I've been involved since I was like 12 years old doing CPR, assisting with it, and then I was a provider and you know, immediately there afterwards. But we had to establish a program and go out into the community and start teaching that and the value. Just hearing you know when I would see patients out at like the heart Walk or some other event that I was at, really was very powerful and I heard a lot of positive feedback immediately. So I feel like every time I go out and do one I get like three down the pike, which is it's wonderful. I've trained other people to go out and do them.

Speaker 1

We have partners in the Cancer Center that take that message out to the community as well. You know I work with a bunch of the physicians Dr Fender and Dr Neil Wimmer. They are real positive on taking information to the community. So I would say, probably two or three times a month I make time to go out to whoever asks, if it's a church group, if it's a little league or if it's a soccer club, whoever.

Heart Health Beyond CPR

Speaker 1

You touch a lot of lives that way, and when I'm asked to go back and repeat, you know they tell me how they've used the information that we've provided, that Christiana Care gives me the platform to provide hearing how they've either implemented changes in their life or they've encouraged someone in their life to seek medical care, and so it's super valuable. And the American Heart Association is just near and dear to my heart. They are the reason that we have cardiovascular medicine and all of the. You know all of the advances that we've made over the last 30 to 40 years. I guess it's their partnership, and so when they ask me to do something, I always take the opportunity to say yes, because you never know who is going to be able to save a life.

Speaker 3

Beyond CPR? Yeah, what other life-saving measures, life-saving kind of back pocket skills? Should someone listening?

Speaker 1

to this have. I would encourage everyone to get CPR certified right, like even if it's just like you go online and you watch one of the videos for hands-only CPR, but I think that it's incredibly valuable. Not only do they do CPR in the, you know the American Heart Association classes, they also do choking. So techniques to you know the Heimlich maneuver, you know if you're choking and you're all by yourself, like how you can push yourself over a sink or the back of a chair to be able to relieve your choking. They teach first aid right so how to tie a tourniquet. That's super important If, accidentally, you know you drop a knife on yourself or something like.

Speaker 1

I think it's just very it's important to know that it's not just CPR and it's not just you know hands only CPR, or you know the BLS, acls, like it's it's. There's a ton of other information in there. So I think choking definitely. I think every one of us has probably choked at some point in time. That and then just knowing how to you know like help an infant who's choking at talk.

Speaker 2

You gave us a lot of tips here for being able to help other people how to perform CPR on somebody else, and you did brush a little bit into being able to perform like the Heimlich yourself. But what are some of those other tactics and things that you should be doing for yourself, looking at heart health and such?

Speaker 1

Absolutely so. First and foremost, have a great relationship with your primary care physician, whoever it is if it's a nurse practitioner, if it's a PA, if it's a physician. Know your blood glucose numbers. Know what your blood pressure usually runs. Lab work, like with your lipid profiles, cholesterol, is super important. There are so many factors with heart disease that we can't impact because it's genetic right. Like you can't help what your mom or dad gave you, it's just the way it is, but you can mitigate it right. Like you can't help what your mom or dad gave you, it's just the way it is, but you can mitigate it right. We can make better choices eating. We can move our body, we can stay on top of our health. We need to know our numbers and we need to know where we are. You know as far as our risk factors go, so we know what to mitigate. So I think first you just have to really you know, have that good relationship with your doctor and know those numbers about yourself. Also, it's very important to be able to take time for yourself and to know we are creatures of. I will do it tomorrow, because nothing bad's ever going to happen to us. I know that bad things happen to people who are great people and not trying to have anything bad happen to them.

Speaker 1

However, your body whispers before it yells. After it yells, then it's going to start screaming. If you don't listen we really need to, I guess um, take a minute for ourself every day. How are we feeling? You know, is that shortness of breath new? That when we're going up and down the steps, like, do I need to call my doctor about that? Absolutely, if you some have a a new symptom, you know, yes, you should investigate that. Do you have, um swelling in your ankles or in hands? Or do you have a cough that just won't go away? Or do you have a headache? What's your blood pressure trending? So, yeah, to listen to your body, your body definitely whispers before it starts yelling and we are just kind of at a disadvantage because we're always so busy.

Resources and Getting Involved

Speaker 1

Right, we can say, oh, I'll take care of it tomorrow, I'll take care of it next week, I'll take care of it after I take care of everyone else. I'll take care of it tomorrow, I'll take care of it next week, I'll take care of it after I take care of everyone else. We explain away our symptoms, right, like we think, oh well, I have this weird discomfort in my shoulder because I lifted heavy at the gym yesterday and I didn't get enough water. Well, is that the case? Or you know? Do you know? Are your lipid levels okay? Do you think it's really just a gym injury or is it something more serious? And is there something more sinister, kind of bubbling at the surface? So we do need to get better as a whole of listening to ourselves and our symptoms and making our own selves a priority.

Speaker 3

Jen, I'm hoping that someone listening to this is now going to get certified in CPR. Encourage a family member to potentially get their kids involved in being CPR aware emergency aware. How can someone get in contact with you if they're interested in taking that next step?

Speaker 1

Sure, I'm happy to answer any questions I can be reached at joldom, at christianacareorg, and as far as like finding a CPR class or finding a BLS class or finding first aid, anything like that, I would say heartorg. That's the American Heart Association's website. They have a list of all kinds of locations, times and providers that are happy to provide.

Speaker 3

And I know anyone going to the Heart Walk in a few weeks. We'll see you there as well.

Speaker 1

Absolutely. We'll be doing hands-only CPR demonstrations. We have swag, we have lots of education and information. We have a whole table set up. It's myself and my co-chair this year. Well, I'm her co-chair, mary Kate Carroll. She's actually over the Structural Heart team, so she's doing a great job fundraising for them. It's super important because all of the money that I guess is brought in from the Heart Walk stays in Delaware. It goes to research efforts and education and programs for Delawareans, so super important. I'm grateful that every year Christiana Care has continued to support. It's an incredible initiative.

Speaker 3

Jen, thank you so much for your time and all of your life-saving work. Thank you so much for the platform. Appreciate it. Check out the show notes for this episode for more on CPR, the upcoming Heart Walk and other life-saving information.

Speaker 2

You can always keep up with For the Love of Health on social media. Just search Christiana Kerr on your favorite platform.

Speaker 3

We'll be back in two weeks with another great conversation.

Speaker 2

Until then, thanks again for joining us.

Speaker 3

For the Love of.

Speaker 2

Health.

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Megan McGuriman

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