Shawnee Mission, Blue Valley School District High School Students Team Up to Strengthen Life-Saving Skills

Johnson County high school students are working together to help save lives.

This fall, students in the Shawnee Mission School District’s Medical Health Science Signature Program, students from the Blue Valley Center for Advanced Professional Studies (CAPS) program, and a local pulmonologist have been working together to strengthen skills and learn more about emergency response.

The students have worked together to practice responding effectively as a team to unresponsive patients. They’ve focused especially on the skill of responding as a team in a situation where responders have just met.  The students also have been working to strengthen their ability to provide quality compressions and correctly respond using an Automated External Defibrillator (AED).

The student groups have been consulting with Dr. Mike Waxman, pulmonologist. Waxman has explored the idea of developing an app that could alert subscribers who are trained in emergency response to nearby cardiac arrests. This could potentially connect patients to a trained responder before Emergency Medical Technicians (EMTs) arrive.

Waxman shared the original idea with Connie Gandy, Shawnee Mission Medical Science Signature Program coordinator, at a simulation conference.

Knowing that the Shawnee Mission School District’s senior-level Medical Science 2 students are certified in Basic Life Support (BLS) and cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), Gandy shared with him that she believed Johnson County high school students could be helpful resources.

“This experience was very beneficial and provided an opportunity for Shawnee Mission students to do some planning on how they might help others learn CPR,” Gandy said.