CPRMom

Teaching CPR and First Aid is not a steady business.  I'm either super busy or listening to crickets.  Some months are fairly even with course registrations and scheduled on-site classes.  I've had some  pretty quiet months with almost no one calling, but usually my schedule isn't too crazy-busy. Until now.  Last month my phone and inbox literally started overflowing. In May I taught 26 classes, 13 of those were scheduled on-site courses.  As of June 17th I will have taught 21 classes, traveling on-site to 6 of them.  I still have 2 hospital courses towards the end of June.  8 of those June classes were just this past week.  And yesterday I had 2 emails asking to schedule courses before June 26th. Last night in class suddenly my brain felt like I had hit a wall.  I've hit teaching exhaustion.  I felt like I hit a brick wall. I'm not great at saying to no to scheduling classes, if I can fit it on my calendar I'll usually sch...

Sunday I ordered CPR & First Aid supplies from 2 different companies.  Two because the supplies for my new AED trainer are not carried by the company I normally order from. Why do I have loyalty to one company? Because tomorrow, Wednesday, my order from the usual company will arrive. The status on the website or the second company is "order processed" and I have yet to get a delivery alert to my email. This is only my second time ordering with this new company.  They even sent me a lovely handwritten note thanking me for my order.  As much as I thought the note was a nice touch, I'd rather receive the stuff I ordered.

Add the subtitle:  and how creating schedules in my house is like herding cats. My instructional business is part-time.  I don't teach full time.  I could try to, but I'm just not sure there is actually enough people out there wanting to take classes to have enough registered participants in each class.  I also like being part-time as I can teach around my family's schedule. And this is where I should put "Cat Herding" on my resume.  Except, we don't own a cat. I usually schedule my classes 3-4 months ahead of time.   Not this time.  Here it is June, and I'm finally posting the summer class schedule.  We were supposed to take a trip, which didn't end up happening.  Then we were signing the kids up for summer camps, looking at creating smaller vacations while college touring all while not knowing which colleges since my oldest has been so busy with school, softball and work that I only see her for short pockets of time - if at al...

I am often asked how long a CPR class is. Typically they can run anywhere from 2 1/2 to 3 1/2 hours. It depends on the size of the class and the material covered. My classes due to run the full length of time because I like to provide a lot of hands on time and I want to make sure everyone's questions are answered. Some instructors or training sites may list their classes as only 2 hours. My guess is that they have much smaller classes or a lot more CPR equipment than I have. No matter what the length of the course. A good CPR class should have the following components: Hands on practice . Just watching a demonstration of a skill is not the same as learning it. Each participant in the class should have hands on practice time. Questions and answers . If you have a question the instructor should answer it. Keep in mind that while instructors do go through training to teach CPR, we aren't perfect and we don't know the answer to every question that could possibly be as...

When I was expecting my first child I remember my childbirth class instructor suggesting everyone take a CPR course. At the time I was a practicing EMT, so I was already certified and didn't think much of it. A few months later I belonged to a post partum group and someone I knew from the Fire Service came to discuss why parents should take a CPR class. Attending a CPR class is a really good idea, but how many new parents are able to fit it in with everything else that needs to be done before the baby arrives? We all know how to call 911 and in many areas the 911 dispatcher will provide EMD - Emergency Medical Dispatching. But how well would we be able to follow the dispatchers directions to provide effective CPR? Recently a study was done in England. Volunteers from a prenatal class were provided a telephone and an infant mannequin and instructed that they had just discovered an unresponsive infant. They were told to call for help and to follow the dispatcher's instructions. D...