As a paramedic, I’ve seen many instances of bystanders stepping up to provide lifesaving aid to strangers. But I’ve also seen many instances of people hesitating to help – due to fear, uncertainty, or confusion – until it was too late. That’s why, at ProTrainings, we make it our mission to help people gain both the skills and the confidence to take action when disaster strikes.
When responding to a call as a paramedic, my motto is, “Today is your day to live, unless you prove me wrong!” The harsh reality of life is that everyone dies. But the good news is that no one knows when someone’s time has come – so until I’m proven wrong, I’m going to treat every single situation like it’s that person’s day to continue living and give each rescue my all.
At ProTrainings, we believe that anyone can learn to perform CPR and save lives in an emergency. But how we train people in these essential skills matters, and traditional classroom methods simply aren’t as effective as CPR training needs to be. So before creating what is now ProTrainings, I went looking for a more effective approach.
Here is the story of how ProTrainings came to be and why we are committed to creating a better way to learn lifesaving skills.
We Have a Problem
Long before ProTrainings was even an idea, I got my start as a combat medic in the United States Army. From there, my passion for serving in emergency medical situations led me to become a paramedic and, later, a public educator training people in CPR and first aid.
Each of these roles taught me a lot about rescue work. I learned that I love teaching people how to save lives, and I also learned about communicating effectively with large groups of people.
Most importantly, I learned that we have a huge global problem. Even though large organizations like the American Heart Association and the Red Cross have been providing CPR and first aid training for decades, most people are still leery of getting involved when a person needs rescuing.
So I started researching and asking questions to find out what was causing this problem and how we could begin to solve it.
Fear Prevents People from Saving Lives
Through my research, I discovered that, very often, fear is what prevents people from taking action in an emergency. The five most common fears that stop people — regardless of their level of training — from giving life-saving aid are:
- Uncertainty of skills
- Fear of causing further harm to the emergency victim
- Fear of being sued
- Fear of contracting a disease
- An unsafe scene
It’s very simple to perform CPR once you know what to do, but it’s not easy to overcome these fears, even if you know the simple CPR steps. I needed to find a different way to train people in life-saving skills that would also give them the confidence to use those skills in real-world scenarios so more people would live to see another day with their loved ones.
Following national and international consensus guidelines for CPR training, I started developing my own CPR training curriculum. Eventually, this led me to co-found ProTrainings because I quickly realized that the curriculum wasn’t the only problem with traditional CPR training — the whole system was broken.
There Must Be a Better Way
Traditional classroom training is simply not the best way to learn CPR. There are several reasons for this:
- A 4-8 hour session once every two years does not give people enough practice to feel comfortable performing CPR.
- People are often forced to attend the training at inconvenient times, such as after work or on weekends, which means they are not in the right state emotionally or psychologically to learn something as serious as life-saving skills.
- Although people may acquire valuable skills during the training, they are likely to lose those skills, and the confidence to use them, in the two years between sessions.
Again, I knew there had to be a better way. After a catastrophic flood that destroyed my retail training space — and my training business along with it — I decided to try moving my training from the classroom to an online platform. Today, that platform is known as ProTrainings.
ProTrainings Instills the Confidence to Save Lives
ProTrainings began with the belief that if we could provide training to people when and where they want it — and have it available when they’re at their best, not just when they can fit into a classroom with everyone else — then we could improve CPR and first aid training to a point where people could be confident in their skills and be ready to rescue in a time of need.
Over the years, we’ve grown from uploading simple demo photos and the occasional compressed video to training tens of thousands of people every month through our intelligent learning platform.
Best of all, not only have we been able to certify professionals and laypeople all around the world, but we’ve also improved the delivery mechanism of how people learn this life-saving skill. It’s an absolute honor to be part of a team where we can play a part in training people to save lives and help change the world for the better.
Fear Doesn’t Have to Hold You Back
Too many people hesitate to provide lifesaving aid in an emergency. But fear doesn’t have to hold anyone back, and we at ProTrainings are committed to helping people overcome their fears and take action whenever and wherever an emergency may occur – because life matters.
You, too, can make a huge difference, both in your community and in the world. Contact us today to learn more about our group and remote-staff CPR training programs so you and your staff can gain the skills and confidence to save lives.