'This is what saves lives.' Lake Local seeks Project ADAM’s Heart Safe School designation

LAKE TWP. − The training began with Lake Local’s athletic director finding an unresponsive student mannequin on the floor of an upstairs classroom at Lake Middle/High School.

He notified the school office, which broadcast an announcement over the loudspeaker: “This is just a drill. Code AED, second floor, Room 224. I repeat this is just a drill.”

Legal studies teacher Teresa Miller rushed into the classroom with a medical kit within 38 seconds. Intervention specialist Katrina Gaughan, school nurse Catharine Hoover and health teacher Joe Trego quickly followed.

They checked the victim and found no breathing or pulse.

“We need to get the AED,” Hoover said.

As Gaughan handed Hoover the automated external defibrillator case, Miller cut open the mannequin’s baseball jersey and Trego readied a self-inflating bag that would deliver the rescue breaths during CPR.

The AED’s robotic voice instructed them from there, telling them to stay back while it analyzed the victim’s heart rhythm and delivered a shock. It then advised the responders to begin five rounds of CPR.

Team members took turns administering the 30 chest compressions for each cycle, switching about every two cycles. Trego handled the rescue breaths and helped keep an accurate count of the chest compressions.

Hoover went through a mental checklist of questions: Did someone call 911? Was someone handling crowd control? Had someone notified the student’s family? Was someone at the door to greet the paramedics? She was assured that everyone was in place.

The team continued its cycles of CPR compressions and rescue breaths for 10 minutes — stopping only at the AED’s instructions — before paramedics with the Hartville Fire Department arrived with a stretcher and took over.

“OK, that’s a wrap,” Hoover said.

The training wasn’t perfect — the loudspeaker announcement gave the number of a neighboring classroom, for example — but they accomplished their goal: They delivered immediate potentially life-saving CPR and defibrillation to a sudden cardiac arrest victim.

The training is among the final steps of Lake Local’s four-month quest to become the first Stark County school district to have all of its schools designated as Project ADAM Heart Safe schools. The designation recognizes schools that have established a sudden cardiac arrest program that includes awareness, training and effective emergency response.

Lake Elementary's response team received its designation banner after its cardiac arrest drill on April 3. Lake Primary, which will work with the Uniontown Fire Department, will conduct its sudden cardiac arrest drill at 7:45 a.m. Monday.

Project ADAM has expanded to 29 states

Lake Elementary nurse Stephanie Hibbs introduced the idea of seeking Project Adam's heart safe school certification after learning about it during an orientation for new school nurses.

Project ADAM, or Automated Defibrillators in Adam’s Memory, is an initiative that has spread to 29 states to train schools and businesses how to prepare for and handle sudden cardiac arrest emergencies. It began in 1999 in Wisconsin after the death of 17-year-old Adam Lemel, whose heart stopped beating while he was playing basketball.

To be designated a heart safe school, districts must prove they can retrieve an AED, apply pads and deliver a shock to an unresponsive victim in under three minutes. They also must have appropriate signage for the location of AEDs on campus, ensure that equipment is checked monthly, establish a designated cardiac emergency response team, create a response plan that is widely shared and conduct ongoing training.

Research shows that immediate CPR and defibrillator use can double or triple a sudden cardiac arrest victim’s chance of survival and that every passing minute without CPR reduces the chance of survival by up to 10%.

The Centers for Disease Control & Prevention estimates that roughly 2,000 people under the age of 25 die from sudden cardiac arrest in the U.S. each year.

Hoover, who is Lake’s school nurse coordinator, said Lake already had the AED equipment and people trained on how to use it as well as how to perform CPR, but the district hadn’t put it together in a formal plan or practiced how to respond in an emergency, which is required under Project ADAM.

She said the drills have helped them recognize and address some potential challenges that could have delayed their response time. During Lake Elementary’s drill, they learned that the school’s elevators are too small for Hartville fire’s stretchers to lay flat and were able to create a workaround. The training at Lake Middle/High School produced discussions on whether school personnel should call the department directly or through 911.

“We’ve learned so much from this already,” she said.

Hoover knows what can happen when help is delayed.

She was a student at Olmsted Falls High School in 2000 when her friend, Dara Hosta, collapsed after running a 440-meter race during an outside gym class. Paramedics were able to resuscitate Hosta, but the 14-year-old’s brain had been deprived of oxygen for too long and she was declared dead six days later, according to news articles written at the time that Hoover has kept.

“That always has stuck with me,” she said.

While Lake’s sudden cardiac arrest response plans are for responding to emergencies during the school day, Hoover said the district plans to extend its response plan to athletic activities as well.

She noted how a grandfather who had attended a Lake basketball game in 2013 was saved due to a team athletic trainer and spectators who administered CPR.

Hartville Fire Chief Mike Lorentz, who attended both the Lake Elementary and Lake Middle/High School drills, applauded the school district for improving its response to cardiac arrest emergencies.

“Because no matter how close we are and how quickly we are able to respond able, there is still an amount of time that it takes for somebody to call 911, for it to get into the 911 answering center, then get to our dispatch and then get sent to us and for us to respond to here,” he said. “Our response time might be minutes, but all of those other things add quite a bit of time.”

He noted that Hartville fire’s medics arrived within three minutes after they were contacted, yet Lake's school responders already had been performing CPR for roughly 10 minutes during the drill. He said having school personnel ready to immediately perform CPR and defibrillation is critical to keeping oxygen flowing to the heart and brain.

“This is what saves lives,” he said.

Reach Repository education writer Kelli Weir at 330-580-8339 or kelli.weir@cantonrep.com.

On Twitter: @kweirREP

This article originally appeared on The Repository: Lake Local Schools seeks Project ADAM's Heart Safe School designation