Former Tipperary captain Ger 'Redser' O'Grady believes that CPR training should be a compulsory part of the PE curriculum in secondary schools.
His call comes after a potentially life-saving intervention he himself made last week.
O’Grady, along with his Thurles Sarsfields club colleague Gary Loughnane performed CPR on a cardiac arrest victim for more than 30 minutes before emergency services arrived last week.
The victim, a local man, slumped to the ground at a petrol station in the town before O'Grady and Loughnane reacted instantly to the situation.
"You’d want to be in the full of your health to do it," he told RTÉ Radio One’s Morning Ireland programme.
"It’s tough going, but look, but when his life is in your hands, you will stay going. We took turns and then the ambulance came.
"You don’t go too fast, you don’t go too slow, you keep pumping and pumping. What you are really doing is buying time for the ambulance to come on, trying to get blood flow into the brain and into the heart."
O’Grady's CPR training was put into action, and he is adamant that it should be part of PE training in secondary schools to increase the survival rates in the country.
"It should be top of the agenda. Every student should have to learn CPR"
"About 10,000 people die in Ireland every year of cardiac arrest. Out of that 10,000, 5,000 die outside of hospital. If you performs CPR in the first 3-5 minutes, you give that person a 50% chance of surviving.
"If they do PE for the Leaving Cert, it [CPR training] should be top of the agenda. Every student should have to learn CPR. There’s Tom hanging on for his life with a bit of luck. He was lucky we were in the right place, at the right time.
"It’s only takes half a day to learn and it’s not rocket science. You are just buying time for the ambulance."
Learn, Enjoy and Save Life. HealthForce Training Center offer services such as Basic Life Support (BLS), Advance Cardiovascular Life Support (ACLS), Pediatric Advance Life Support (PALS), CPR AED, Pediatric First Aid CPR AED and First Aid CPR AED. Read more of our blogs.
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