To all the men trained in CPR:

I know this may not be a conventional letter since there are a lot of quotings and notes I took directly when I interviewed some of the male paramedics and boys who learned CPR with me during the training. Anyway, something has to change.

 

“ The new study showed women were 14% less likely to receive bystander CPR and defibrillation than men.”

 

“ This inequity of bystander CPR for women is staggering.”

 

As a daughter of a doctor, I’ve learned something that even my father hadn’t even noticed before: Rate of layperson BCPR was significantly higher in males (19.5 %) than in females (17.3 %). Sad but true, the gender disparities among adult recipients of bystander do exist.

 

This was shocking to me since the procedure of performing CPR on men and women is exactly the same, then why did this happen?

 

When facing a woman experiencing cardiac arrest, I get you guys have doubts: Will people accuse me of harassing or assaulting because I have to do chest compression on a woman, since I’ve touched their breasts? I’ve never trained on performing CPR on women before, maybe I should just wait and call an ambulance and let professionals deal with this......What if I killed her and have to go to the police..... You hesitate because people judge, you hesitate because you may be blamed even when you actually helped. You think everything depends on whether the woman lives or not.

 

“ People are cruel, they humiliate you if things go wrong, treat you like sinners. They think it’s you who killed her. Things you can’t control.”   

 

“ Honestly, I’d panicked for a moment. You know, we rarely practice on female model or should I say never. As tragic as it is, it’s hard to buy a female model, it’s even harder to teach people using it, to allow people to practice on it.”

 

These are all doubts that I’ve encountered when interviewing men around me who have received CPR training before.

 

But should you let these constrain you when there’s a life that needs to be saved? Do these outweigh a person’s life? Sometimes, life is just like this. Things don’t go well even if you do everything you can, but it won’t definitely go well if you never tried. We should always try as hard as we can, as long as there’s still hope left: At the end of the day, that is a life.  

 

Be brave, don’t hesitate, as you know that you are protected by the Good Samaritan law: you will not be penalized for rendering help, you will not be criticized due to civil damages that may occur no matter what. Remember, any hesitation can cost a life. Give a hand when you can, a life may be saved because of it.

 

Sincerely believe good people deserve all the best and we should always do everything we can to save lives.

 

From a girl, a female, a woman