Women are less likely to receive CPR in public than men: Study
Women are less likely to receive CPR in public than men: Study
When a medical emergency happened in a public place, just 61% of women received the help they needed, compared with 68% of men.
One time, I put my hand out to stop a kid from running into the street.
Most people were like "Woah that kid almost died." But one Karen looking woman had a "How dare you touch that child" look.
I'm not going to stop saving kids who run into the street. But it did make me question when to involve myself or not. And I can see a lot of people hesitating because some fuckface has something stupid to say.
Yep. People have strange selective views on things.
I was standing with the car at the crossing where it enters the main road. A kid came racing down the bike path from the local primary school on his scooter and tried to get around my car without wasting speed, i.e. slowing down. Physics said: "NO" in no uncertain terms, and the kid kissed the road in front of my car. I got out to help, but he already got up, probably more annoyed about loosing speed than anything else, answered negative on my inquiry if he was hurt or needed help, and was off like lighting.
Two days later, the police was at my door, responding to a neighbors claim that I had run over a kid that day...
I could imagine that neighbour just heard some noise, looked outside, and then just concluded, you must've hit that child, from what the aftermath looked like...
A man stopped my son with his hand from crossing at the signal because a car didn’t see him and could have mowed him down. I think a lot about how that could have gone badly if the man had second guessed himself for even a moment. Legally and socially, we need to be on the side of anyone who makes a split second decision to help in a crisis.
We are, it's called Good Samaritan laws.
Nah man. I won't go near kids. Not my problem... If they die because of stupidity... it's just thinning the heard.
You inferred one look from a stranger experiencing a traumatic event, that apparently wasn't reinforced by conversation with her after the fact!? I don't think you should modify anything about your instincts or responses...
Oh boy....
Don't you know? Every woman who is middle aged and doesn't give an appreciating look all the time I want is a misandrist Karen. And if someone dies, it's her and other women's fault.
I am hesitant to put my hands on the chest of a woman who hasn't given consent.
One of the few cases where consent of anything can be assumed is lifesaving of a person unable to respond. One of the first steps of cpr is to seek a response to ensure that the person is unconscious before then confirming no pulse.
But yeah I get why it’s awkward
Understandable, but you only need to do it if there is no pulse. If you are doing chest compressions to save their life, I am sure the majority would be quite happy with not dying. You don't need to take off their top, and you are pressing on their sternum rather than their breasts. You can't really mistake CPR for anything else if you are doing it correctly.
You don't need to take off their top
Well, you do if using AED. Tom Scott has video on those too: https://youtu.be/ecVHYg4_vZw
CPR does not save lives. It preserves a dead body until an AED or ambulance can bring it back to life. You need to remove her shirt and often bra (if there is a wire it must go, otherwise only if in the way) to use an AED so if some item of clothing is in the way don't worry about removing it.
Note that the above is generic CPR training that doesn't respect local laws which can say something different.
If you have cpr or aed training....and a person is unconscious, consent is implied. Especially if you follow training. You felt for a pulse and/or they were not breathing, you will not get sued in this country. If someone manages to get it to court, they will lose.
I am a certified CPR and AED , a registered WFR and just had a training class on the matter. As long as you follow proper protocol you are ok. And I'd like to add, as a man, yeah, I'd be nervous also exposing a womans chest in a crowd, people are stupid, but you can probably save a life.
If you're doing CPR they're effectively dead before you start. If you're the only one there, no witnesses unless you manage to save her. If you're not alone, you should tell them you're going to start CPR and order them to call 911 or 999 or whatever. Or volunteer to call while they start compressions. Then you can take over/take turns and vouch for each 's intentions.
Bystander: She's apneic and has no pulse! I'm beginning CPR!
Commences compressions
Patient: Uh actually I have a boyfriend
"I was trying to save your life."
"Ugh are you still talking to me?"
I think the average person can tell what's going on if they see someone prone on the ground and someone doing chest compressions.
I used to think the same. Then trump happened.
I would love to live in that universe of yours were the average person is well informed and rational.
Conversely, we had a call for a woman passed out in a car called in by a bystander. We arrived and she was still seated in the car, with a man doing one-armed compressions on her chest. It looked bad ... until we got closer and saw she was both awake and speaking normally to her "savior", and his CPR was on the level of "movie CPR".
We figured he would stop on his own once he realized she was awake: he didn't. We figured she would in some way indicated he needed to stop, or at least react adversely in any way to the man pushing (weakly) on her chest ... she didn't. We had to tell him to stop.
To his credit I think he just saw someone down and got tunnel vision. Based on his face the realization of how absurd it was hit a few seconds later.
Super facts
Some US states do not have Good Samaritan laws. This means that you could save someone's life, they could sue you, and they could win. It's pretty fucked up.
This sounded strange to me, so I looked it up. This Wikipedia article suggests all US states have a good samaritan law, and some extend that further by requiring bystanders to reasonably provide assistance. However, who is liable and to what extent appears to vary. Additionally, interactions with other state laws could complicate things.
All that said, I admittedly don't know much about good samaritan laws beyond this article.
Some of those laws are more recent, I believe. I got CPR certified in the 90s and the police officer instructing the course did indeed warn us to be careful about saving people as we could possibly get sued.
If I had to guess, it was a symptom of the sue-everyone-for-everything craze in those days, crossed with state laws that didn’t yet provide explicit protections for good samaritans because you generally don’t try to harm someone who went out of their way to save your life.
We need to ask Jackie Chiles.
My understanding of it is that CPR has a lot of negative side effects that we're usually not told about or aware of, like cracking or breaking a rib during compressions.
Not that this is in any way good, but I think some have successfully sued their saviors due to complications from CPR.
I think a law should be passed that says you can't sue someone for complications of saving your life, but, you know...
@OceanSoap @alienanimals Sounds like it’s time to push for Good Samaritan laws in every state. We have one in California. And yes, there can be side effects, but these aren’t limited to GSs. Medical personnel can inflict them as well (damage with intubation comes to mind), and if the injuries are consistent with life saving measures, they are protected. Why shouldn’t GSs also be covered?
Throw in that CPR is effective in 10% of situations and maybe there are reasons why people don't act. 10% is wayyy better than 0% so it is always worth trying.
I'm cpr certified and was told this during training. Maybe it's not general population knowledge though.
Every state has something.
But that only provides legal protection from lawsuits after the fact; generally, they require that you act in a reason way, in the scope of your training (or under direction of say 911 dispatch,)
Some will also mandate that you call 911 immediately- though no state requires more than that
Can I get some qualifications so I can send them a bill, if this happens?
At least here, the good Samaritan law specifically excepts people that are receiving compensation for it.
I live in a very strict and conservative country and once a young girl passed out in front of everyone. Her sister was panicking screaming at her to try to breath. I'm usually a savior vigilante type of guy whenever and wherever the situation but sadly at that time I was wearing shorts. So my immediate reaction was to nope out and pretend I didn't see anything. They had to bring another woman who was working close by to do CPR and resuscitate her. The girl then survived obviously. I later had feelings of guilt that I did not step in to help, but in the same time I could've been jailed for touching her and worse get beaten by everyone there. what an awful dilemma ...
Just take the shorts off before helping
Was it illegal there to touch a woman while wearing shorts?
In order to use a defibrillator, you have to remove everything from a person's chest. This includes the bra and to even shave chest hair to be able to apply the pads correctly.
I've always thought that it would be troublesome for a man to have to apply a defibrillator to a woman if someone assumes foul play because of their own issues.
Life over dignity in that situation, everyone else be damned.
If I saw someone with a defibrillator ripping the clothes off an unconscious woman, I don't think I would suspect foul play.
Which is why all the most clever rapists carry defibs.
If you EVER see a man carrying a defibrillator, 9 of 10 times, he's a rapist.
What's worse, the extra super clever ones, ride around in ambulances with disguises to make them look like paramedics.
Whenever I see a rapist mobile with flashing lights, I run them off the road.
I've saved at least a dozen women already this year.
I could imagine someone thinking "wow he took her bra off, that was unnecessary". Since correct defib use isn't really common knowledge
Imagine dying because some old puritan assholes decided at some point that female nips are inherently offensive but male nips are fine. Humanity can be so idiotic sometimes
Yeah that wouldn't be what prevents a man from giving a woman CPR. It would be the potential for someone to cry foul play.
No, they decided both were bad. It wasn't until 1935 that male nips were legal to open-carry
I just did red cross CPR and AED training last week, and the materials said the clothes all need to come off (or pulled up or whatever - off the chest) but chest hair doesn't need to be shaved. Presumably the instructions change periodically.
The instructions say that chest hair comes off if the pad isn't sticking effectively to the chest. That means shaving if you have a razor, or using the second adhesives (kid/adult sizes usually come in the same AED kit) as ad hoc waxing devices.
It does not have to be life over dignity. There can be a middle ground they could at least provide a cover while doing their thing. I know a teen girl who changed school, did therapy and tried to sue because she once had a seizure and they stripped her naked in front everyone to save her. Her "friends" took video of her and spread it all over their school. As awful as it sounds I'm not making this up.
Sounds like a problem for women with chest hair.
you dont have to shave chest hair, wtf are you talking about?
They're constantly updating best practices, the kits come with a little razor now. Though we got told to apply the pad on the hair and then pull it off, effectively waxing the area. It's apparently to get better contact. Personally I think shaving would be more effective, suppose you do what you have to in the situation.
Honestly, I don't find it all that surprising. Men are wise to err on the side of caution when it comes to even the appearance of improper behavior and I could see how many might freeze up in such a situation, even if they knew CPR.
I remember a woman talking about how some kids were running around naked near their house and he had to call her, and she was kind of grumbling about how he wouldn't just handle it himself. I had to explain that I would have done exactly the same. There is no WAY as an adult male I'd be accosting underage naked children and asking where their parents were, etc., unless they were in danger of freezing or other dangers. This woman was acting like her husband was being lazy and/or a wuss. He was just using his head.
You can thank our society for this bullshit. It is because we put women on a pedestal in our society and men have been relegated to being the butt of jokes or the quiet backbones of the working class who have no right to complain, and if they dare not fit into those two categories, they are then accused of toxic masculinity or something similar.
This comes out of puritanical sexual shame and nothing more. Religion poisoned people's minds regarding sexuality.
52% versus 55%. 61% vs 68% in public places. Not a lot of difference, within margin of error even.
The sample size was in the tens of thousands (39K total cases according to the original EUSEM article) so it would be extremely surprising if there were no real difference. You could easily say it's within margin of error if there were only a few hundred cases examined, but we're talking about tens of thousands here.
Important to note though that the data only accounted for Canada and the US.
Another important caveat is that we're assuming the data collection process was not flawed or biased, which is maybe a legitimate concern. But it's a separate issue entirely.
Having a larger sample size doesn't necessarily decrease the margin of error. It's impossible to say if the difference is statistically significant without crunching the numbers.
Meh... Even without seeing the data collection methodology, or the analysis, I'm calling shenanigans. Thats an almost non-existent difference - how do we know the cases where women didn't get support are primarily women-only spaces (say women's gym, yoga, etc)?
Someone's using this slight difference to push a narrative.
What do you mean by "margin of error"?
This isn't a pole. This isn't self reported numbers. Those are real life numbers
It is still a sample, which is therefore subject to a margin of error. Unless you think this data accounts for all CPR given anywhere to anyone, ever.
For example, if they'd only sampled one man and one woman, and the man reported receiving CPR and the woman reported not, the "study" would show 100% of men and 0% of women receive CPR. Staggering "real-life numbers"!
Pretty much all data has margins of error, including "real life data". The margin of error just often doesn't matter.
But is it a poll?
The more significant finding here is 40% of people don't get CPR - I think this mostly comes down to public ignorance. It's not like most schools make their students CPR certified. I got mine through Boyscouts, but a lot of people don't really get that kind of education.
I wouldn't be surprised if that explains the gender difference, too. Due to ignorance a lot of people might not really grasp the difference between chest compressions and fondling someone's chest 🙄
In germany, you need to take an 8 hour first aid course to get your driver's license.
It's better than nothing, but it's been 5 years for me and I'm not sure if I could still do it properly.
I don't know maybe because I keep it fresh in my mind for my job but it's really simple. If you look up emd cpr (proqa) instructions they give yoy very good simple steps to follow depending on how you answer.
There's more to it than that. CPR certifications only last two years (at least in the US) and there's also the liability included with performing CPR that they cover in the class. If you perform CPR but are found to not have a current certification then you can get in a heap of financial debt as your not truly covered by the protections the certification can provide you, mainly around the "permission" to perform the act. Ribs can be broken and lungs can be punctured simply by performing CPR normally with the required amount of pressure needed.
Call 911 and then follow the instructions of the operator who is trained in teaching CPR over the phone in these situations, and knows the latest. That you had training means you are more likely to understand instructions given ,and if not you were following directions of someone else.
You need to call 911 anyway. CPR is only performed on dead people, you need an AED (or similar tools in an ambulance) to bring someone back to life.
In most cases good Samaritan laws protect people performing CPR regardless of certification.
Though yes, in my ideal world everyone would have up-to-date training paid for by the State.
Good Samaritan laws would protect you from that, no?
One of the beliefs is also the education of CPR is taught on male-form mannequins and that's how folks are taught anatomical landmarks. Many people don't actually know how to find the correct location to compress when breasts are present apparently.
I got mine through Boyscouts, but a lot of people don't really get that kind of education.
Unless you're a kid or a den mom, you don't have CPR training. It only lasts a few years.
Makes sense, you could save their life and catch a case.
Having a one in 4 chance that you won't get CPR If you collapse in public is a disturbing statistic.
And only 19% of people who do get CPR survive long enough to go home.
I didn't care about this statistic when my daughter needed cpr
While panicking I didn't know what do do but call the emergency services, I screamed in terror into the phone, they were trained and instructed me and the wife to do what we needed to do until the ambulance came. My eyes get teary and my gut gets cold even writing this. My daughter survived and is as healthy as can be now.
This is even when my wife is an trained nurse that would have been able to handle the situation if it was not our daughter.
Nothing could have prepared us on how to handle the situation if we couldn't call emergency services
Well maybe she has a boyfriend
The puritanical culture we have is the ruin of everything. We wouldn't be overly thoughtful about consent this and that if not for awful people getting away with sex crimes left and right, even in current day. Guess what? If you're not a rapist, don't hold yourself to the same stringent standard - do the fucking CPR and save a life.
I would love to see one example where someone was prevented from doing CPR by a bystander because "you shouldn't be touching that woman". I would put money that it has never happened.
Modern CPR training insists yiu have to announce what the fuck you’re doing because people will universally get the wrong idea.
You have no modesty when you’re dying- the underwire in a bra interferes with AEDs working, and the pads have to be on skin. For compressions you need to see where you are so you are, so the clothes come off.
It’s standard to drill that in, precise cause it has happened.
Hell. We’ve heard anecdotes of cops coming in and macing people giving CPR. People frequently assume the worst and act on it.
Whether it's happened or not, you're also running into two big problems America has:
- People who act without thinking
- People with a hero fantasy, and also often a gun
It doesn't have to have happened for people to fear that it will. In a nation where too many people carry guns, act rashly, and want to see their face on the news as a local hero, it just sounds too damn possible and risky.
Not surprising. This aligns with other studies around women and cardiac problems. People have a bias toward identifying the symptoms that men show, and women often have a tendency to display different symptoms.
I... don't think that's the reason why people would avoid specifically CPR, specifically in a public place.
"I have asked people this question on my own, and I've been told by some that they don't know where the [anatomical] landmarks for CPR are due to women having breasts," Dr. Nicole McAllister, clinical assistant professor of emergency medicine at the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, tells Yahoo Life.
Many people who receive CPR training practice on flat-chested mannequins and learn that CPR should be performed across the breastbone and nipple line, she says. "Because people think of doing CPR in terms of a male-form dummy, some of this doesn't translate well and they don't feel comfortable doing it in the right spot," McAllister says.
From the article. There's also an expert that bring up your reason, and there are some more explanations given (people don't realise it when a woman has a heart attack, people are afraid of hurting the woman)
Woman get a bake shake from the healthcare system, but I think this is more about tits and people being afraid of touching them to do CPR....
*shake'n'bake
Cool data point, but 7% doesn't feel significant to me.
Cool data point, but 7% doesn't feel significant to me
Probably because you’re not a woman that may need CPR one day. It's easy to dismiss things that won't ever effect you.
Probably because 7% is a small ass number. Give me a 7% statistic about nonbinaries, and we'll see how many fucks I think it's worth.
Of course, because the people trained in CPR are generally men. And men aren't gonna risk getting accused of SA by helping a woman. It's just too risky. What's the point?
This Radiolab Episode always comes to my mind when people bring up CPR in any context. Apparently doctors overwhelmingly don't wish to be resuscitated for a good reason...
It's critical to point out the primary scenario associated with the survey and chart data in that article.
"Given the scenario of irreversable brain injury".
That changes everything.
Oh definitely. 10 minutes max to administer CPR before death is pretty much certain. IIRC, after 3 minutes chances of brain damage rise to 80%.
Not to mention the 30% chance of painful broken ribs, but hey at least you're alive with probably a hefty hospital bill, at least in the states.
I suppose that an addendum should be added to do not resuscitate tags. Do not resuscitate after specified time span. Or something like that.
Reminds me of a chat I had with a prepped. I basically said that living in a functional society is hard, so I'd rather die quickly in a catastrophic collapse.
As a person who loves being alive, I can honestly say I'd rather be dead under many different specific hypothetical circumstances.
My estimation is that you live long enough, you eventually encounter one or many of those circumstances. The right to live as well as the right to die the way you want should never be infringed upon.
No way I help a woman in that situation. Zero chance unless I already know them well. not casually well, they have to know mebin return. So basically family and nothing further.
I know CPR.
Reap what you sow society.
I had a woman ask me to get I her car to figure out why it wasn't starting for her one time, this isn't even close to CPR and that feeling of dread hit me and I refused. No way I'm putting myself in even greater danger.
I know the reality is thing will likely be fine in both situations. Then I remember multiple women telling lies in my life, accusing me of things I never did.
I had to go to court and has her admit on stand she lied. I almost went to jail and she got off Scott free. That isn't justice.
With how much more weight women's voices get and how much favourably the justice system views women compared to men. Yeah no, fuck that, I will not put myself in a situation where a woman can tell another lie to ruin another life.
lol @ these ridiculous fever dreams of an incel. We both know none of that ever happened.
Okay.
did it to themselves by punishing men who shouldnt be punished because to push an agenda to much
I cannot imagine hating anything as much as you incels hate women. Pathetic.