Just in Time
When a BU custodian suffered a sudden cardiac arrest in early November, Annemarie Kougias, director of the George Sherman Union, approached the man calmly. He wasn’t breathing, and a coworker was pounding his chest and telling him to hold on.
“I knew this was real,” Kougias, who has been a BU employee for more than 20 years, told the Boston Globe. Fortunately, she had recently completed a training program for parents of young athletes and was able to guide the coworker and a police officer through CPR and using a defibrillator.
“The whole time I didn’t think we’d be successful,” Kougias said. “What we did made the difference.”
As the man lay on the floor of the GSU Ballroom, Kougias, recalling what she had learned in class, explained how to push on his chest 30 times, then wait. A police officer got the defibrillator ready, and Kougias put it on the man’s chest and activated it. She listened for a heartbeat, checked for a pulse, and repeated what she had done. Paramedics arrived and took over, and soon the man began to regain color. Doctors have said that a minute longer without help could have left the man in a vegetative state.
Kougias got her CPR training in a Youth Athletic First Responder Program run by Brockton Hospital and the Brockton Fire Department. She said that the training, which is designed for parents and coaches, should be available in every school and at every youth sporting event in the state and that every coach and parent should be trained.
“I’m all about getting this equipment and getting people trained,” Kougias told the Globe. “Now, I just want other people in my life to be trained so that they could help me.”
Students, faculty, and staff at BU can receive adult and child CPR and first aid training at BU’s Fitness and Recreation Center through the Emergency Medical Response program.
For more information about first aid classes at BU, visit the FitRec EMT Web site.