Life & Safety with Jimmy Rios
Welcome to Life & Safety with Jimmy Rios! Get ready to dive into a world where safety meets storytelling! Drawing from his rich background as a former firefighter, EMT and safety expert, Jimmy brings you straight into the heart of safety and emergency preparedness. Episodes feature easy-to-understand tips, real-life stories, and interviews with experts, all designed to help you protect yourself, your business, and those you care about.
Whether it's advice on navigating everyday safety challenges or insights into the latest in health and safety trends, let this podcast educate and entertain you. Join Jimmy and level-up your safety knowledge with engaging discussions that could one day save a life.
Life & Safety with Jimmy Rios
"The Office" Lied to You About CPR
It’s CPR Awareness Week, and we’re setting the record straight. In this episode, Jimmy and Megan tackle the most common myths and misconceptions about CPR, from outdated advice still floating around the internet to reasons why people hesitate to jump in and help.
Do you have to check for a pulse? Nope.
Is mouth-to-mouth still required? Not necessarily.
Can you perform CPR without a certification? Absolutely, and the dispatcher on the phone can guide you step by step.
They also explain why it’s okay if you hear a rib crack (and why that’s not as scary as it sounds), how CPR changes for infants and kids, and what not to do if you think you're having a heart attack (note to self: do not throw self against a table).
They even dig into the uncomfortable truth about why fewer people are willing to perform CPR on women, and why it’s time we all get over it.
This episode we've got a lot for you! Practical tips, real talk, and a few weird tangents (like pancake-flipping babies and bad advice from the internet) that will probably make you laugh.
We're even talking about that infamous CPR training scene from The Office — the one with Bee Gees music, organ harvesting jokes, and some seriously bad safety moves. Jimmy and Megan explain what that scene got wrong (hint: almost everything), but also how pop culture moments like this can still spark curiosity about real-life emergency response.
Whether you’re CPR-certified, or not, we hope this episode inspires you to learn more and feel more confident if or when you need to action and lend a helping hand or two.
Life Safety Associates specializes in emergency response training for corporate ERT Teams. We help businesses create competent and confident first responders who are ready to handle unexpected emergencies. For more information you find us @lifesafetyassoc or email@lifesafety.com.
What's happening?
Jimmy:It's another Life and Safety Podcast with Jimmy and your girl, megs. Hello, today we're going to talk about CPR, kicking off CPR Awareness Month. Is it a month or a week?
Megan :I think it might be a week.
Jimmy:It's a week. Anyway. Cpr is a good thing to be aware of, hey yeah, but I feel strongly about it.
Megan :I think it deserves a month.
Jimmy:I think it deserves a year.
Megan :I agree.
Jimmy:So no, I don't do it like that, but we should definitely talk about it, take it seriously, and we're going to talk about some misconceptions of CPR. First and foremost, remember calling 911 and acting just like calling 911 is helpful.
Megan :Yeah.
Jimmy:If you call 911 and you decide to do chest compressions only, which is totally legal, awesome, awesome.
Megan :Should you take a?
Jimmy:class 1,000%? Should you take a class 1,000%? Should you take a class from us? 1 billion%? But you definitely should at least try to do CPR. So let's, talk about what are some of the criteria to do CPR.
Jimmy:All right, because one of the misconceptions we kind of read on the interwebs before we got here was you have to check pulse. So only if you are a paid professional you have to take a pulse before you start CPR. For non-professionals it is the person unconscious, unresponsive and not breathing. If they fit any of those three criteria, we start CPR. Not any, all of them, all of them. Not any of those three criteria we start cpr, not any, all of them, all of them.
Jimmy:Not any of them, all of them yeah thank you um now that being said, we place our hand on the center of the chest with your fingers pointing away from you center of the chest being at the nipple line and we press hard and fast yep ide ally we want to shoot at 100 to 112 beats a minute. Um another little bites. The dust by queen is a good song to be too. Or if you're a little shiny, happier person staying alive. Um, I kid, I do the Bee Gees. Do the Bee Gees Now you said, I started doing compressions.
Jimmy:What happens if you break a rib Megs?
Megan :Then you keep going.
Jimmy:Yes, if you do put your hands correctly right in the center of the chest, the nipple line you press down, you're going to hear crunching and snapping noises. That's not necessarily bone. That's usually cartilage that grips yeah, cartilage is the um.
Megan :When you're pressing the center of the chest, you have the sternum, which is a little football shaped piece of bone in the center of your chest, and then that connects to your ribs with cartilage, which is the stuff your nose and your ears are made out of, and so when you're doing compressions you're usually pressing on the sternum and the cartilage, so the sternum sort of disconnects from the ribcage.
Jimmy:Yes, so could you bounce and get tired and start moving towards those rib tips and break some rib tips? Oh for sure, sure, sure that's part of doing cpr potentially. So you're going to be okay. All of this is following the good samaritan law, so you're not going to potentially get sued or in trouble for it right, you did your best and you were acting in good faith, hopefully, so you're not going to get in trouble per se now. What are some other misconceptions we found on the interwebs there makes?
Megan :um that, uh, uh, um. Only professionals should do CPR.
Jimmy:Yeah, definitely not. I mean, everybody can do it. There's lots of YouTube tutorials, especially when hands-only CPR came out, when it was just kind of when it got changed from giving breaths first versus doing compressions first. There's lots of training videos. My favorite is oh, I can't think of the comedian the comedian's name. He was in the hangover um. And mr kim in the hangover um. He's dressed up in the john travolta thing. He's like at like a prom or something like that. It's pretty funny and it's a good one.
Megan :Mr Chow.
Jimmy:Mr Chow. I said Mr Cam, I'm sorry.
Megan :Oh Ken Jeong.
Jimmy:Ken Jeong yes.
Megan :Yes.
Jimmy:So his video is pretty great. A good satire video is the office space CPR videos. Those are pretty fun. Those are pretty fun.
Megan :But that's satire.
Jimmy:Don't do it like that. Don't be too, you know. Don't start harvesting your organs.
Megan :Don't remove their face and put it on yours.
Jimmy:Yeah, so what's?
Megan :another good misconception, as you were saying, the mouth-to-mouth that you have to give mouth-to-mouth for CPR to be effective.
Jimmy:No Studies have shown compressions are more effective than mouth-to-mouth, because when you're doing compressions you're actually moving air and circulating blood at the same time, so it's more efficient.
Megan :Another misconception is that you have to be specially trained to do cpr on children or infants.
Jimmy:Well, it's definitely a different technique, so I definitely recommend it and practicing that technique so you don't hurt the babies yeah um now with infants it's a two finger technique, versus a child that's a one-handed technique, whereas adults it's two hands.
Megan :So what's considered an infant mix oh uh, newborn to about one year of age, maybe one or two, depending on how big the baby is um, a good rule of thumb that I like to think of is that if the child is small enough that you can maneuver them, like pick them up and sort of fling them about Not really fling them about, but, like for infants, if you flip them over and like hold their head down and slap their back and then flip them over and do chest compressions, and so if they're small enough that you can sort of flip them like a pancake, all right, I'm digging myself into it. Can you help?
Jimmy:No, you're doing fine, you're doing fine, that's it. I mean you've got to be able to pick the baby up and move them and manipulate them and hold them a certain way in just your one hand.
Megan :So if it's a big one-and-a-half-year-old olds, you may not be able to do that. You may need to go child CPR on that person. You know, um. So that was fine. That's why I kept you letting you, let you cook, yes, um. And then child is, uh, the upper age range of the infant.
Jimmy:So the one to two-ish, but too big to maneuver um to the onset of puberty. Yeah, yeah, um. So again, between 8 and 12, you guys start thinking about that and how big they are, how big they are good, good, um, good um another one is cough cpr. Oh cough cpr. The aha just did a social media post on this right.
Megan :Yes.
Jimmy:Go ahead.
Megan :Cough. Cpr is not a thing. Don't do it. So my understanding is the misconception came about because sometimes if you're having a vasovagal reaction, sometimes medical professionals will recommend that you cough, like if you're having a certain type of like AFib or an irregular heart rate, sometimes you can cough and that can stimulate the vasovagal nerve and sort of get your heart back into a safer rhythm and sort of get your heart back into a safer rhythm. That being said, that is something that is to be watched over and explained through by a medical professional. And then the other sort of reason that I've heard about this coming about is that if you cough, it'll cause the muscles in your chest to squeeze and that'll compress the heart for the person and it'll squeeze it and get it back into its rhythm. In the same way, compression would, which is not accurate, especially if we're doing cpr in an unconscious person. An unconscious person isn't going to be awake for you to tell them to cough, so right.
Jimmy:It's going to be really hard to meet that criteria of unconscious, unresponsive and not breathing to get somebody to cough Right, right. Another one along those same lines is let me back up a step. So doctors will have you do those. Make that coughing like bear down, like you're pushing, and then go cough. You know, make that coughing like bear down, like you're like you're pushing, and then go cough. You know, make that cough. And they do that while they're watching your heart rhythm so they can time it, so you can do that, so to your point. That's how they kind of make that happen, where you can't just go okay, I think I'm rhythm, I'm going to make myself cough and just squeeze your hands and cough, cough, cough. It doesn't work that way, yeah.
Megan :It's very much to be watched over by a professional. Yeah, leave that to the people with training.
Jimmy:Yeah, and if you think you're having a heart attack, don't throw yourself against a steering wheel or a table or something like that and try to change your heart rhythm. Oh, please don't. So that's leftover stuff from the pericardial thump, when medical professionals would think the person was needing CPR and they would hit them as hard as they could in the middle of the chest to, kind of air quote, shock the heart into a rhythm yeah and what's the and the kind of reason why I had this is you get blood force trauma.
Jimmy:Hitting somebody will change their rhythm into ventricular fibrillation which is what the ad looks for. Yeah, so there was some thought process to that. But I I've also had people especially early on when I started teaching at Life Safety that people would ask what if I was having a heart attack or I thought I was having a heart attack? Can I just throw myself against the table and change my heart rhythm? No, it doesn't work that way?
Megan :No, not the business. No, it doesn't work that way.
Jimmy:It doesn't work that way. All right, let's do one more business. No, it doesn't work that way. It doesn't work that way.
Megan :Alright, let's do one more. Let's talk about the misconceptions of the difference of CPR on men versus women.
Jimmy:Ooh, there's not really misconceptions to that. It's just more people don't want to do CPR on women. They don't want to touch the chest.
Megan :Yeah.
Jimmy:Most responders actually won't do that from an old study. It's a five-year-old study now, so in 2020, a survey came out that was taken in 2019 that 90% of responders, outside of their uniform, would not perform CPR on a woman. Now that stems from just the weird taboos of baring of the chest and just touching a potentially stranger bare chest.
Megan :Especially in this day and age. We live in a world where people have their phones on them, they have a camera right there and there's, you know, the fear of being sued or having a video placed on the internet of you doing something that strangers might judge yeah, for sure, and I'd rather live with those consequences than live the consequences of not trying to help somebody. Yeah, I agree.
Jimmy:As a father, as a co-worker to women, as a husband, as a brother, as a a son, I want the women in my life to have cpr before on them, so it's for sure gonna happen if I'm around, yeah, and I would like to think that in society more people would step up to do that if they knew what they were doing and they have the good intent yeah right. So I guess what we're saying with that one is don't be afraid you CPR.
Megan :Yeah, do CPR all around, just do CPR.
Jimmy:Yeah, if it's needed call 911, do CPR and remember you can always call 911, and they can help you determine if CPR is needed.
Megan :That's a weird way of phrasing that, but the dispatcher can talk you through the process of like okay, well, is the person unconscious, is the person breathing or not? And then they're trained to help you figure out what you need to do. So, when in doubt, call 911.
Jimmy:Thanks for joining us on the Life and Safety Podcast. Peace.
