12/11/2025
According to journals of the America Heart Association (AHA) and OhioHealth Newsroom, while men tend to suffer from sudden cardiac arrest (SCA) along with “overall, higher mortality rates, women usually have lower survivor rates following an event. This is due to a few different reasons and among these are; women often present differently which directly correlates with delayed care. Furthermore, there was a rather large analysis performed by by Duke university covering 47 states and more than 309,000 women spanning over the years of 2013-2019, which consistently showed that women were 14% less likely to receive bystander CPR.” Some of the reasons that people may not initiate CPR on a woman are; being uncomfortable with touching a woman’s anatomy, not feeling comfortable with hand placement on a woman, afraid they will hurt her, or fearing how they will be judged for having to unclothe or touch a woman’s anatomy. Therefore, she often dies. As instructors, we need to do our part to not only properly train our students and help them to overcome their fears, but also, get them to face and get past their uncomfortability with a woman’s anatomy. (Duke University School f Medicine, Synclaire Cruel, Feb 27, 2024).
