CPR/AED Awareness Week: How to save a life
As part of CPR and AED Awareness Week, Penn Hospital wants you to have the tools needed to save a life.

"You want to know the knowledge beforehand," Jeffrey Salvatore with the American Heart Association said, "so you know how to best act."

When seconds count, you could have the power to save a life.

A kiosk in the cafeteria at the Perelman Center is helping people to learn CPR.

Health professionals said at any moment, anyone can collapse in front of you. As a cardiac ICU nurse, Salvatore has performed CPR many times -- and not always in a hospital setting.

"Outside of work, I had to perform CPR on a beach one time in public on a bystander," Salvatore said.

Salvatore now works for the American Heart Association. They installed the kiosk along with Independence Blue Cross.

"It is so easy to save a life and this is a great way to do it," Vic Caraballo with Independence Blue Cross said.

After giving compressions for 30 seconds on a mannequin, the kiosk records your progress.

"It's going to give you feedback on your hand placement, compression depth and compression rate," Salvatore said, "so you want to try to be in the green zone."

The kiosk was first installed in 2020 and since then, more than 8,000 people have learned CPR, possibly saving thousands of lives.

The American Heart Association said over 300,000 people go into cardiac arrest every year while in public, but the public doesn't always respond, adding that nationally, the bystander response rate is about 40%. But in Philadelphia, it's as low as 23%.

"We don't know if that's because they're afraid," Dr. Benjamin Abella with Penn Hospital said. "We don't know if that's because they never learned CPR. It's probably a combination of both."

Health professionals no longer recommend mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. They said giving chest compressions until medics arrive can triple the survival rate.

"What we're doing is buying time with CPR," Abella said. "It moves blood through the body and extends that window of opportunity, so when medics arrive they can save a life."