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Words cannot describe how badly CPR is presented – in books or TV shows.
I’ve taught myself to ignore the CPR done on beds and with bent elbows on television. These things are part of the medical TV trope. But books. Books!
For the love of goodness, does no one know how CPR works? The main character of this book is finishing off her Chemistry bachelors to support her eventual medical degree. The following is first person narrative.
“When I first saw them , I thought they were all dead, but they had pulses. Some quick CPR helped keep them alive until …”
1) How the (blank) did one person do CPR on three people?
2) PULSE! equals no CPR – pulse means heart is working!
If you have CPR being done in a book, take a CPR course – a recent CPR course (in the past decade rescue breaths have been dropped). If you don’t have time, ask your friends who have – or just go to your local Red Cross and see if one of their instructors can review the scene. I’ve yet to read a book where CPR is done at an appropriate time in an appropriate manner.
By the way, this applies to any medical procedure. Get a recent fact-check; as my Geeking Science posts indicate, the field is always changing. In fact, checking with subject matter experts applies to any, ANY, .A.N.Y. topic.