Hand to heart

What better way to spend Valentine's Day than learning how to protect or save a heart?

As a way to raise awareness for American Heart Awareness month in February, the Faculty and Staff Wellness Program hosted a training session on Valentine's Day at the hands-only CPR kiosk located in the RecPlex.

The UD community was encouraged to stop by for as little as three minutes and learn a potentially life-saving skill that could help to decrease the leading cause of death for men and women in the United States.

This event was also meant to highlight the unique asset to the community. The University of Dayton installed the first CPR kiosk on any college campus in the country in September 2017 thanks to a gift from Dayton Freight. The kiosk is free and open to anyone in the community when the RecPlex is open.

Two Flyers, Sean Ferguson ’15 and Matt Lickenbrock ’16, have helped to publicize the hands-on training kiosks around the country. It was in the Dallas-Fort Worth airport that Lickenbrock spent 10 minutes at the American Heart Association’s test kiosk to learn the skill; two days later, he used it to help save Ferguson’s life after Ferguson was struck by lightning while crossing a parking lot on campus in April 2015.

Many individuals who tried the machine attempted multiple times and expressed how much of a workout it was.

Caity Grundtisch, a senior sociology major, said, “That was a lot harder than I thought it was going to be, you had to push so hard. But it is really important to know. I had never really thought about it before.”