Sometimes, blog posts are very easy to write. I was tagged on this CPR video by a respiratory therapist friend of mine. It comes from a FB page called Enfermagen. Since I don’t speak the language, I’m not sure if they’re using this as a good or bad example of giving a patient CPR, but I’m here to confirm this is bad CPR and here’s why.

1. The patient has purposeful movement. As you can see, several times in the video the patient reaches up and attempts to move the mask from his face. Any time a patient crosses their midline, it’s purposeful movement. It definitely appears that he is sick, but he has enough of a perfusing blood pressure (and therefore pulse) for his brain to be getting blood flow in order to make these movements. Therefore, he does not need CPR.

2. The compression rate should be 30 compressions to 2 breaths. The compression depth is two inches. When the patient does not have a breathing tube in his throat (called intubation), the compressor should pause in order for the person to be able to deliver breaths. This compressor doesn’t really pause in order for the rescue breaths to be delivered. Luckily, for this gentleman, his compressor gives relatively shallow compressions and not the two inches they should be.

3. No one checks a pulse. What might help these rescuers is that when the patient starts moving, is to check his pulse. This might confirm for them that he has one and they can stop compressions.

4. Patients should not need to be restrained for CPR. CPR is for unconscious patients without a pulse. If you’re retraining the patient, they likely don’t need CPR.

I’m not sure the medical nature of this gentleman’s illness. Clearly, it looks like he does need some sort of medical assistance. It’s just not CPR.

Can you see anything else wrong with the way this team is delivering CPR?