Click here for information on cancellations due to snow / inclement weather

CPR Seattle Blog

Learn more about Safety, CPR and First Aid

CPR Seattle and the Seattle Office of Emergency Management Provide Multi-Language Hands-Only CPR Materials

There are many communities in the Seattle area whose members do not speak English as their primary language. When important public safety and health information is only available in English, these communities can be underserved and therefore may be at higher risk.

Sudden Cardiac Arrest (SCA) can strike anyone at any time. Studies show that the faster a victim of SCA receives CPR, the more likely she is to survive. Having a large body of citizens trained in CPR can greatly increase the chances that an SCA victim will receive prompt CPR from a bystander.

A bystander without formal CPR training, or one who is not fully confident in their training, may hesitate to give CPR to another adult, or when unsure of their ability to administer mouth-to-mouth breaths. A natural reluctance to make mouth-to-mouth contact may also delay CPR, as can cultural proscriptions against such actions.

In such cases, the American Heart Association (AHA) recommends the use of “Hands-Only” CPR – i.e., no breathing, chest compressions only. According to the AHA, “Hands-Only CPR performed by a bystander has been shown to be as effective as conventional CPR with mouth-to-mouth breaths in the first few minutes of an out-of-hospital sudden cardiac arrest. Conventional CPR may be better than Hands-Only CPR for certain cardiac arrest situations, such as infants and children, teens or adults who are found in cardiac arrest (whom you did not see collapse) or victims of drowning, drug overdose, or collapse due to breathing problems.”

CPR Seattle and the Seattle Office of Emergency Management have collaborated to produce multi-language informational flyers to increase community awareness of “Hands-Only” CPR.  Available in eleven languages (including English), these flyers are intended to be downloaded, printed, emailed, or faxed to as many members of the applicable communities as possible.

We encourage all those who serve or are part of these communities to use the links below and get the word out that this is something everyone should know how to do. Sudden Cardiac Arrest is a treatable condition. The more Seattle citizens we have that know these steps, the safer all of us will be. 

Download the flyers using the following links (files in pdf format):


Enjoy our blog? follow us on Facebook.

Published on February 1, 2017