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By Alex Branch

Would you know how to react in a cardiac emergency? About 70 percent of Americans say they would feel helpless because they do not know how to perform CPR.

UNT Health Science Center medical students are doing their part to change that in Texas.

About 50 Texas College of Osteopathic Medicine students will team with hundreds of students from nine Texas medical schools on Saturday to offer free CPR training simultaneously in 10 cities. This unprecedented effort, coordinated with the Texas College of Emergency Physicians, will include six training sites in Fort Worth.

“The most critical time for someone in cardiac arrest is the three to five minutes before paramedics get there,” said Matt Millington (TCOM ’18), a student organizer. “The more people who know how to correctly perform simple chest compressions, the better outcomes we’ll have in our community.”

Training at the Texas Two-Step How to Save a Life Campaign could take between 5 and 20 minutes, depending on whether the person learning wants a quick lesson or to stay and ask questions. Medical professionals from MedStar and JPS Health Network have also joined the effort.

Students chose the training sites — like YMCAs and Hulen Mall — because there are likely to be a lot of people passing by, said Faroukh Mehkri, a third-year TCOM student and co-chair for the Texas College of Emergency Physicians Medical Student Committee.

“We have found that it is sometimes hard to schedule people to show up and learn CPR,” Mehkri said. “But if we are there in high foot-traffic areas and people realize they can stop and take a few a minutes to learn a life-saving tool, they really want to do it.”

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