Six in 10 U.S. adults feel uncomfortable taking charge and giving cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), according to the results of a survey released by the American Heart Association.
The online survey was conducted in December 2021 and included responses from 1,011 nationally representative U.S. men and women aged 18 to 80 years.
The survey shows only one in four participants said they would always perform CPR to aid someone, with a lack of training or knowledge on how to perform CPR cited as the top reason for not performing CPR (60 percent). Additionally, three in 10 cited fear of hurting someone or facing legal consequences as reasons for not doing CPR, and 30 percent are also less willing to perform CPR on someone due to the pandemic. Nearly eight in 10 respondents agreed that CPR education should be offered to employees at worksites.
“The data in this survey shows that most adults understand that CPR saves lives but identifies a real gap in the willingness to actually be the one to deliver the lifesaving assistance,” Anezi Uzendu, M.D., an American Heart Association volunteer expert and interventional cardiologist at the Mid America Heart Institute in Kansas City, Missouri, said in a statement.
