GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ) – American Heart Association volunteers met with Wisconsin lawmakers Wednesday asking that all 9-1-1 dispatchers in the state, be trained and able to give callers CPR guidance over the phone.
A plan to draft a bill is in the works.
Cullen Peltier is the Director of Public Safety Communications for Brown County and says their dispatchers are already CPR certified.
“We use a program called Emergency Medical Dispatch and that walks the dispatchers through those CPR instructions or pre-arrival instructions for the first responders with the person on the phone.”
Cullen explains how that program works.
“We get the chief complaint, whether it would be unconscious and not breathing or whatever the case may be and then we launch that program on our computer screen. Then that walks the dispatcher through the appropriate questions to ask.”
Cullen says 9-1-1 dispatchers with the county have had to be certified in this critical training for over 10 years.
“I think it’s very important. I think it’s providing those, possibly life-saving instructions to the callers in the interim before the first responders can get there,” said Cullen.
Not all dispatchers in Wisconsin are trained to give CPR instructions to callers.
Those precious minutes between when the emergency call is made and when medical professionals arrive on the scene, can literally mean the difference between life and death.