Over 436,000 cardiac arrests happen outside of a hospital setting every year. Considering they can do serious damage within a short amount of time, or can even be fatal, this is an alarmingly high number.

While you can’t stop cardiac arrests from happening, you can certainly be proactive and help mitigate the damage.

How? Through the use of cardiopulmonary resuscitation, or CPR.

To learn about the importance of CPR, keep reading. We’ll give you 8 good reasons to learn cardiopulmonary resuscitation.

1. You’ll Save Lives

The most obvious and rewarding reason to learn CPR is that you can save lives.

It’s easy to feel powerless in the face of a sudden cardiac arrest, but you can make a difference between life and death. If you know CPR, you can jump in and provide vital help in crucial moments. Even if you only know the basics, it can be enough to help circulate the person’s blood until you either get more advanced tools or an ambulance arrives on the scene.

90% of people who have cardiac arrests outside of hospitals die; by learning CPR, you can do your part in helping these people live. CPR can double or triples the chance of survival.

2. Feel More Confident In Emergencies

Most people panic when there’s an emergency. Although you may have a vague idea of how to do CPR, you may suddenly forget everything if you’re faced with a real person going into cardiac arrest.

When you’ve been through proper CPR training, you’ll pretty much have muscle memory for this procedure. This means that when someone collapses and you feel anxious, your body will kick into gear and handle things efficiently.

3. It’s Easy

You may be scared to learn CPR; it’s a lifesaving procedure after all, so it must be hard to get a hang of, right?

Those perceptions you’ve been taught are all wrong. While it can save someone’s life, CPR doesn’t require you to know rocket science.

CPR involves chest compressions done to the beat of Bee Gee’s tune “Stayin’ Alive.” Fitting, isn’t it? (If you don’t know this iconic song, we suggest you give it a listen now!)

Usually, it involves you doing mouth-to-mouth as well, but if you don’t feel comfortable doing that, you can just do hands-only CPR. While giving occasional breaths is more helpful, doing chest compressions is better than doing nothing at all.

4. Keep Your Family Safe

Remember how over 436,000 cardiac arrests happen every year? 7 out of 10 of those happen at home.

While mostly older, more out-of-shape people experience this, your children and healthy spouse could potentially have cardiac arrests as well. That means there is a chance of this happening to any family member in your household.

If you know how to perform CPR, you can drastically improve the chance of survival by providing vital assistance until help arrives.

5. Stop Brain Death

In cardiac arrest, the heart stops pumping, which means your body isn’t getting the blood flow it needs. Your blood contains oxygen that your various body parts need in order to function correctly.

One major organ that needs blood is your brain. When cardiac arrest happens, your brain won’t receive oxygen, which means the cells will start dying. In about 5 minutes, you can experience brain death.

Once brain death happens, this means you start losing some of your brain function, permanently. CPR prolongs the time to brain death.

How? When you’re doing chest compressions, you’re essentially taking over the beating function for your heart. While it’s not as effective as the heart itself, it’s still getting some blood and oxygen to your vital organs, especially your brain.

6. Learn A Valuable Life Skill

You know how the saying goes: knowledge is power. Even if you never have to use CPR, at least you’ve learned this skill.

Since it’s so easy to do, you’ll remember it for years to come, if not forever. You can then teach it to others. Who knows, they may save someone’s life because of what you’ve taught them.

7. Have A Leg Up On The Competition

For many nannying, babysitting, or teaching jobs involving young children, listing CPR on your resume can give you a leg up on the competition. Parents are leaving their precious children under your care, so when they read that you have critical lifesaving skills, they’ll have more peace of mind about leaving their kids with you.

Every year, less than 3% of the US population gets CPR training. By investing some time into learning CPR, you can put yourself way above your competition when it comes to applying for jobs.

8. Learn How To Use An AED

An AED (automatic electronic defibrillator) is a device used to get the heart beating normally again. Usually, you perform CPR until you get your hands on an AED or paramedics arrive and use the one they have.

Since the use of AEDs is so widespread now, CPR classes will usually teach you how to use these devices as well. As a result, you’ll be even better equipped to handle emergency situations when people go into cardiac arrest.

Now You Know The Importance Of CPR

It’s evident that CPR is significantly important. It can literally mean the difference between life and death for someone!

Seeing as bystander assistance can help tremendously with cardiac arrests, you should highly consider learning CPR, as well as getting an AED for your home or business. With the proper training for both, you can help save lives.

One Beat can help you get started. If you’d like to keep yourself, your family, employees, and clients safe, consider getting an AED for your home or business as well as getting CPR certified with One Beat.