Kannapolis Fire Chief Tracy Winecoff recently recognized the entire department for their commitment to the Kannapolis CPR Initiative. In 2009, when firefighters responded to cardiac arrests, the average resuscitative (return of spontaneous circulation or ROSC) rate was only 12%. That year, the department established the Kannapolis CPR initiative to improve the success rate of treating cardiac arrests. This initiative increased the level of medical training for responders, increased staffing levels to critical calls such as cardiac arrests, the purchase of advanced resuscitation equipment, and increased the number of citizen CPR classes offered. Since then, Kannapolis firefighters have been successful in increasing the percentage of people resuscitated.
In 2022, the department established a new goal – to successfully resuscitate at least 30% of cardiac arrest victims. They achieved this goal and had a resuscitation rate of 53.8% - over 20% higher than the initial goal. According to a report by the American Heart Association (AHA), cardiac arrest remains a public health crisis. There are more than 356,000 out-of-hospital cardiac arrests (OHCA) annually in the U.S., nearly 90% of them fatal. That means nearly 1,000 people each day die from cardiac arrests at their home, workplace or other locations.
Kannapolis Fire is committed to saving as many cardiac arrest victims as possible. You can help by learning CPR. Having people on scene who can begin CPR immediately before our trained firefighters can arrive can mean the difference between life and death. Statistics show that CPR saves lives. For example, patients in Cabarrus County who were discharged with a high quality of life in 2022, had on-scene CPR initiated from bystanders, in over 54% of those cases.
Our goal for 2023 is to train a minimum of 200 people in our community to do CPR. We are offering free non-certified CPR training classes. CPR is easy to learn and it is a two-hour class.
Sign up for a class by emailing kannapolisfire@kannapolisnc.gov.