Training in life-saving skills including CPR now mandatory in P.E.I. high schools

Thinh Nguyen · CBC News

· Posted: May 08, 2025 5:00 AM EDT | Last Updated: 11 minutes ago

When Grade 10 pupil Jackson Saunders was shown however to execute CPR this week, helium rapidly realized it wasn't arsenic intimidating arsenic radical often think.

"It doesn't instrumentality overmuch to learn. It's truly casual to learn. It didn't instrumentality america long," helium told CBC News.

Saunders was among the Colonel Gray High School students astatine a caller objection of cardiopulmonary resuscitation and different life-saving tools arsenic portion of a caller inaugural by the Prince Edward Island government.

The state has announced it volition marque CPR and automated outer defibrillator (AED) grooming mandatory for precocious schoolhouse students, astatine the Grade 10 level for Public Schools Branch schools and Grade 9 level for French schools.

Teachers crossed the state person been receiving grooming successful bid to present the programme to students.

"As a pupil here, we're each a portion of a community, and being capable to assistance others successful our assemblage is really, truly important," Saunders said.

"I've ever wanted to beryllium a doctor, truthful it's portion of a step, I guess. I anticipation to fulfil that dream."

'A real beingness accomplishment that is instantly relevant'

The programme is spearheaded by the Advanced Coronary Treatment (ACT) Foundation, a nationalist charitable enactment dedicated to bringing escaped CPR and AED grooming to precocious schoolhouse students crossed Canada.

Sandra Clarke, enforcement manager of the ACT Foundation, said the programme has idiosyncratic meaning for her.

"I mislaid my begetter astatine a precise young property from abrupt decease and cardiac arrest. I did not adjacent cognize astir CPR astatine the time, and erstwhile I archetypal heard astir CPR, it was like, 'Oh my gosh, there's thing you tin do,'" said Clarke, who founded the organization.

She said the programme came to P.E.I. acknowledgment to the efforts of section exigency doc Dr. Harrison Carmichael, who wanted to bring the foundation's grooming to Island students.

Together, they worked with the 2 schoolhouse boards and raised astir $22,800, astir fractional of the full needed, from assemblage partners to bargain grooming mannequins. The P.E.I. authorities stepped successful to screen the remaining cost.

"It each came unneurotic truly rather quickly," she said. "Now each 15 schools betwixt the 2 boards person a people acceptable of CPR grooming mannequins, AED grooming units, and the teachers are trained to bid their students successful these life-saving skills."

Clarke said feedback has been precise positive.

"Many teachers archer america — and this goes crossed the country, not lone successful P.E.I. — they say, 'When we're teaching CPR, you tin perceive a pin driblet successful the classroom,' due to the fact that the students are truthful keen to larn however to prevention a life," she said.

"They spot themselves arsenic really being empowered to prevention a life… All the mode astir and crossed the country, we person had hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of young radical and teachers who person saved lives already."

The programme connected P.E.I. besides includes opioid overdose effect training, which Clarke said was added astatine the petition of galore teachers who wanted students to recognize however to respond to a suspected overdose.

"Now, students cognize however to usage the nasal naloxone. They're learning much astir opioids and what tin hap successful opioid overdose. They're learning… what is naloxone, what does it do, and however it tin prevention a life, truthful that, successful and of itself, volition prevention lives, and hopefully it volition besides pb to prevention arsenic well," she said.