COLUMBIA, S.C. — A new bill, the South Carolina Smart Heart Act, would require schools to have a cardiac emergency response plan and telecommunicator CPR training for 911 dispatchers.
The American Heart Association says a cardiac emergency response plan will require school officials to establish steps that they will follow in case a student, teacher or faculty member goes into cardiac arrest. They hope these steps will reduce death from cardiac arrest in school settings.
“When someone has a cardiac arrest, every moment counts, and up to 90% of those events end up being fatal,” Andrew Wylam said. Wylam is the South Carolina Government Relations Director at the American Heart Association.
“The response plan is a plan that the school will put in place to make sure that they know who will responsible in the case of an emergency," Wylam said. "It makes sure their AED sare in an accessible location and maintained and it makes sure we know who is going to call EMS.”
The SC Smart Heart Act will also establish telecommunicator CPR training for 911 dispatchers.
“Sometimes it can take a while for EMS to get there so the t-CPR training law would require the telecommunicators to receive training on how to instruct the caller on how to start CPR immediately,” Wylam said.
South Carolina schools are only required to have one AED or automated external defibrillator on campus. The law also doesn’t require these to be accessible at sporting venues. AEDs are used to help reestablish a heartbeat in sudden cases of cardiac arrest.
State Representative Bryan Lawson introduced the bill.
“Right now, they’re not required to have a plan. So if this event happens, a lot of times the coaches and folks on the field or players don’t know what to do," Wylam said. "All they do is go call 911, but it’s very important that in any cardiac arrest, especially a witness cardiac arrest, that to have that defibrillator there and get it attached quickly and let it do its job.”
Wylam says having access to AEDs can increase survival rates up to 70%.
“We want to make sure that we are empowering America to become a nation of life savers so that bystanders or anyone who witnesses a cardiac arrest is empowered to take action to save someone’s life and that’s what our goal is with these policies,” he said.