The Graduate Education and Medical Sciences Club (GEMS) hosted their annual Save a Life Day event on Mar. 7 to teach students and members of the community the importance of Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (CPR), Automated External Defibrillator (AED) and First Aid training.
Several volunteers came together to help teach the course and certify the individuals taking part in it. The event itself allowed students and community members to learn First Aid at a free or reduced cost due to fundraising that the club does starting in Fall Semester every year.
“Everyone in there right now is in there for free, due to sponsors that we’ve gathered from the community to just donate money to fill the seats for them,” GEMS Treasurer, Sara Clark, said.
Save a Life Day was held in the Maverick Center and featured practice in skills such as CPR on adults, children and infants and AED training for all ages as well.
Savanah Lee for The Criterion
“The CPR and the first aid and the AED skills are things that you actually do see on a daily basis,” Clark said. “So I think it’s important for people to know how to use those skills in case things like that happen, or might need to use an AED or give CPR to someone who has gone down in the grocery store and treat people in times of need.”
Part of the importance of Save a Life Day is the real-life applications of the skills that the students learn throughout the day. All the individuals who participate become certified by the end of the course and have basic knowledge in some potentially lifesaving skills.
“I think it’s better to be prepared and ready to take action and that’s what we strive to do with Save a Life Day, is that we want our students to feel comfortable, like as comfortable as you can be walking into that situation,” GEMS President, Bryce Hopwood, said.
The GEMS club works to brings students together who are studying or interested in Medical Sciences and help them with subjects such as resume building and ethics of the field.
“And so that’s what we strive to do is just make our students the best applicants that they can be when applying to graduate higher graduate education programs,” Hopwood said.
