WILLIAMSON COUNTY, Tenn. (WKRN) — Williamson County residents have stepped up to learn CPR.

Non-certification community CPR classes from the Franklin Fire Department are already full for this fall, but every February, Brentwood Fire & Rescues hosts classes on Friday nights in honor of Heart Awareness Month. According to the American Red Cross, immediate CPR can triple a person's chance of survival if they have out-of-hospital cardiac arrest.

In the span of one year, the City of Brentwood recorded four “citizen saves” where a bystander giving CPR helped save someone’s life.

“Once the fire department got there, the patients were awake and talking,” Scott Barnes, Lieutenant and EMS coordinator with Brentwood Fire & Rescue, told News 2.

Last summer, News 2 covered a Brentwood pickleball player who survived cardiac arrest because a bystander gave chest compressions and used an AED before EMTs arrived.

Since then, BFD said there’ve been three more citizen saves:

• On September 12, 2024, a bystander gave CPR and saved a citizen along Concord Road.
• On December 7th,2024 a bystander saved a life by giving CPR at a big-box store.
• On April 9 of this year, CPR was performed on a citizen at a high school, which saved the person’s life.

Barnes said more than 1,000 residents in Brentwood have graduated from the department's free community CPR classes.

"The more people can learn it, the more you can make a difference. Seconds count when someone goes down in cardiac arrest, and if you can move that blood through the heart and into the brain during those seconds prior to electricity — the AED getting there — or the fire department and first responders getting there, the likelihood of them living or a return of spontaneous circulation ... is much higher,”  Barnes explained.

According to the American Heart Association, of the more than 356,000 Americans who experienced cardiac arrest outside of hospitals in 2023, only 40% received bystander CPR.

"I would love 100% of the world to have this training,” Barnes added.

If you'd like to learn CPR or freshen up your skills, the American Red Cross offers CPR classes online in addition to Franklin and Brentwood’s free community classes. To learn more about CPR classes anywhere in you, follow this link.

News Source : https://www.wkrn.com/news/local-news/brentwood-sees-several-citizen-saves-by-cpr-as-hundreds-of-williamson-county-residents-take-part-in-free-classes/