According to the American Heart Association (AHA), more than 350,000 cardiac arrests occur outside of the hospital each year.

TCU is hosting a hands-only CPR event – CPR that doesn’t include mouth-to-mouth resuscitation – in Frog Alley starting at 11 a.m. on Nov. 9 during the football game against Baylor in hopes of better preparing the community if a situation like that arises.

“For every one minute of CPR that is delayed, the chance of survival is reduced by 10%,” Melissa Denton, a senior nursing student and marketing team leader said.

Not everyone could, or would, perform life-saving CPR because half of the population doesn’t know how, according to AHA. 

“Were teaching people that it’s okay to bear down on someone’s chest to save their life.” Brianna Hopson, a senior nursing student and logistics team leader, said. “All you have to do is push hard, push fast and call for help; you never know who it can be.”

Hopson said that this event does not require any registration. Her goal is to encourage people to stop by for a couple of minutes to learn something that may save someone’s life.

“Come and say ‘Hi,’ it’s not embarrassing,” Denton said. “Would you rather be embarrassed at a football game learning how to do compressions or be embarrassed when a family member goes down, and you have no idea what to do?”

Hands-only CPR consists of two steps:

• Calling 9-1-1 
• Pushing hard and fast with the heel of your hand right above the sternum. 

“The reason it’s hands-only is that more research shows that if you focus on compressions and blood circulation throughout the body until they can regain breathing shows they have a lessened mortality rate when they go into cardiac arrest,” Hopson said. 

Cameron Hook, a senior economics major, said you might not see it as often, but the dangers of not knowing how to do CPR is the difference between life and death.

“For a school with a very active student community, you can imagine that get-togethers and group events are pretty common,” Hook said. “Being educated in CPR is almost the same level of importance on having a designated driver.”