There’S Nothing Phony About Cpr Training On A Dummy

Grab a face, urged Steve Farnsworth. Grab a face and find a mannequin.

Ninth-graders in Debbie Bell’s health class at West Valley High School did just that. After fitting sterilized rubber faces over the mannequins, these teens were ready to practice CPR.

Farnsworth, who is a professional CPR trainer, walked them through each step with a bit of humor and careful specifics.

First, they try to get their “patient” to respond. They check for a pulse, listen for breathing, make sure the airway is clear. Then, they’re ready to find the patient’s sternum, line up their hands and interlace their fingers.

“Remember, your patient is dead. Breathless and pulseless. Otherwise we wouldn’t be doing CPR,” Farnsworth says.

He and his wife, Debbie Farnsworth, own First Line First Aid, a first-aid training company. In eight years, they’ve trained more than 20,000 people, including day care operators and teachers from the Spokane and Mead school districts.

“But my heart is with West Valley,” said Farnsworth, who is a 1976 graduate of West Valley. Farnsworth is volunteering his time to train more than 200 ninth-graders for West Valley.

His gratitude to the school is focused on teacher Pat Knowles, who, his former student says, poured confidence into him.

“When I walked into this school I was one miserable, scared little puppy,” Farnsworth said. Knowles saw something in the timid kid.

“He’d say, `You can do it, you can do it, you can do it,”’ Farnsworth said. “He was a mentor in life itself.”

That helping hand made such a difference to Farnsworth, that he was happy to offer his time training West Valley freshmen.

The students were clearly interested in the lesson. They asked questions and helped correct each other’s technique.

The rubber faces fit over mannequins equipped with “lungs” that “breathe back at you,” so students can get the feeling of what it’s like to have a person breathe.

Before Farnsworth is finished with each group of students, he asks the same question:

“Knowing what you now know, do you think you could do CPR? Could you at least initiate it?” Most agree that they could. One girl says otherwise, though.

“I think I’d just panic,” she says. Farnsworth thanks her for her honesty and reminds them all that being faced with the need for CPR is scary for most people.

Farnsworth tells the teens that one day last week while he was at the school, a 17-year-old student came in to tell him that she’d been first on the scene of a fatal accident. The accident had just happened a day earlier, and she’d clearly been rattled by it.

He leaves them with a final thought: that if they do ever give CPR, they should feel free to call him afterward to talk about their feelings.

“Don’t go through it alone,” he tells them. Farnsworth said he has gotten calls from people he’s trained, who say that while they were giving CPR, they felt Farnsworth was there with them, and that they heard his voice giving them those crisp, clear instructions.