Jul 15, 2016 4 min read

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What if your family were sitting around the dinner table and someone started to choke? What if a friend or loved one collapsed and stopped breathing? Would you know what to do? The first step is to call 911, but what you do next could save a life. Especially in cases of cardiac arrest, survival depends on someone immediately starting cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR). American Heart Association statistics show that 70 percent of out-of-hospital cardiac arrests happen in homes and nearly 90 percent of those are fatal. CPR can double or triple a person’s chance of survival. Avella native and registered nurse Jessica Petka knows the odds, and she wants to make a difference.

“I’ve been teaching CPR since 2009,” Petka said. “One summer, every time I watched the news, I would see drownings of young kids. I was talking to my mom about it and she said, ‘Why don’t you do something about it?’ It was kind of a wake up call and it made me realize I’m part of the problem. I went into nursing because I wanted the opportunity to teach and help people.”

That conversation led Petka to the idea of teaching families and friends CPR in the comfort of their homes. “The more I thought about it, I said to my mom, ‘Everybody has Tupperware parties … what if families had CPR parties?'” Over the next year, the Scott Township resident and nurse at Kindred Hospital in Robinson Township bought the equipment she would need, including mannequins and instructional videos. She placed an advertisement in the newspaper for friends and family CPR at home. The response? Disappointing. Still, she persevered and Petka happily remembers the first home CPR lesson she taught to a new mother in Waynesburg. “When you live in rural settings, it takes time for an ambulance to reach you,” she explained. “She was like a deer in the headlights because the idea of giving her baby CPR terrified her.”

Petka wound up spending three hours teaching the young mother CPR and what to do in an emergency with her infant. “After that three hours, she felt confident and comfortable, so it was worth it,” Petka added.

Petka frequently puts her students in a hypothetical situation where they come home and find someone they love not breathing. “I would ask my patients’ families, and a lot of people really don’t think they’ll ever have to do CPR. Everybody assumes the only time you’d have to do it is because of a heart attack – but there are so many other reasons,” Petka said. “Everybody needs to know it, in my opinion. Say you’re at home and you’re babysitting your 5-year-old niece and she’s choking. You call 911, but for you to know how to do the Heimlich and CPR if you need to – all those seconds save the brain.”

Taking action saves lives, and Petka witnessed that personally while driving past a bus stop once. She saw a woman doing chest compressions on a man who had collapsed. Petka stopped to help and found that woman was also a nurse. “I remember thinking that if that nurse hadn’t been standing beside the man that day, he likely would have died.”

The American Red Cross and some local hospitals offer CPR classes, and you can learn online. However, Petka stresses the importance of hands-on training and practicing what to do in a home environment in giving someone the confidence to perform CPR. “That’s a stressful situation, whether you have a class or not,” she said. “You have someone in front of you having trouble.”

CPR classes vary from certification for workplace to simpler training for the general public. Petka uses the American Heart Association Friends and Family CPR instructional video followed by hands-on learning.

Petka’s home classes range in size from one to 10 people at a cost of $20 per student. She didn’t start out to make money, and hasn’t realized a profit so far. Instead, it’s a mission to save lives.

“At the end of my class, my whole entire goal is that you understand it, you feel comfortable with it and you feel confident in it,” she explained. “If you have those three things, I did my job. No question is stupid and it amazes me how many people don’t know CPR.”

For more information, contact Petka at jpetka4CPR@yahoo.com or 724-747-1665.