• Plan your response by understanding the variables of your community
• Ensure your community CPR and AED training has been obtained based on the prevailing law
• Practice the drill annually
• Join the 2023 Challenge

As most athletic programs have practices after normal school hours, the school nurse may NOT be on campus during an emergency. Ensure you know your nurse's hours of operation when preparing your emergency action plan.

While “Dr. Heart” can be used for an athlete, it can also be called “Dr. Heart for Coach” or “Dr. Heart for Spectator,” thus protecting all. Each “Dr. Heart” Drill can be customized to the individual school’s emergency action plan.  If you do not have an emergency action plan for a cardiac emergency, you will need to create one within your organization’s structure.

The ultimate goal of “Dr. Heart” is to ensure that every sports team, student activity, classroom, and workplace in the United States practices the drill and is prepared for sudden cardiac arrest.

Sudden cardiac arrest is the abrupt loss of heart function, breathing, and consciousness. The condition usually results from a problem with your heart's electrical system, which disrupts your heart's pumping action and stops blood flow to your body.

While it is clear that Sudden Cardiac Arrest (SCA) can occur at any time and without any warning, Typically, schools, teams, workplaces, community programs, or houses of worship do little to prepare to respond to a cardiac emergency. So taking the methods used by sports teams and bands, they use drills, and they practice them over and over to ensure comfort with the process and gain proficiency the more they practice. If current affairs have taught us anything, we never know when a sudden cardiac arrest will happen; therefore, we must be all prepared to respond in a life-or-death emergency with the same methodology and planning as has proven successful elsewhere.