Episode 148: The Fundamentals of CPR Certification and Why it’s Important in the Workplace with Kerrie Zakaras

Episode Summary: 

Kerrie Zakaras is the Executive Program Director at Desert Education Solutions, LLC, as well as a Registered Nurse. Throughout her career, she has worked in nearly every area of hospital operations, including ICU, PACU, Telemetry, and Medical-Surgical units. She is a certified wound care nurse and former hospital administrator for a multi-campus hospital group in the Phoenix, Arizona metropolitan area. 

Today, Kerrie devotes the majority of her time to teaching and further developing the curriculum at Desert Education. In our conversation, she shares how she acquired a passion for teaching life-saving skills that anybody, even those outside the medical profession, should know. 

Kerrie shares how a personal tragedy became the catalyst that motivated her to teach CPR. She also gives a few unexpected and sobering facts about cardiac arrests that illustrate why she strongly believes that everybody should know how to deal with it and, better yet, prevent it. 

Listen in as Kerrie discusses the CPR Certification fundamentals, all the common terms we need to know (ex. “CPR”, “cardiac arrest”, “AED”, heart attack, etc.), how to perform CPR in different situations, and how to update your marketing as a pool professional if you are CPR certified. 

Topics Discussed: 

• 01:05 - An introduction to Kerrie 
• 08:21 - Why Kerrie chose to teach CPR as a side hustle 
• 12:31 - What is CPR and how does one become certified? 
• 15:33 - How is cardiac arrest different from a heart attack? 
• 19:37 - Why everyone should be CPR certified 
• 22:45 - What to expect in CPR training 
• 26:49 - How to Assess the situation 
• 30:20 - What to expect when you call 911 
• 31:35 - How to do CPR in different situations 
• 46:40 - Using an Automated External Defibrillator (AED) 
• 52:52 - How often to attend a refresher class 
• 57:21 - If you work near pools, you should be CPR certified 
• 58:18 - Staying calm in an emergency situation 
• 1:04:56 - How you can market your CPR Certification 
• 1:09:38 - Services offered by Desert Education Solutions 

 

 

 

Sponsors: 

• Primate Pool Tools 
• PoolRx 
• NC Brands 

 

Connect with Guest: 

• Episode Webpage 
• Website 
• Facebook 
• Instagram 
• Yelp 

 

Connect with Pool Chasers: 

• Website 
• Instagram 
• Facebook 
• Facebook Group 
• Twitter 
• YouTube 
• Patreon 

 

Key Quotes from Episode: 

• Most of the time, when people go into cardiac arrest—when their heart stops—80% of the time it does happen outside the hospital setting, which is why it’s so important that we have more people that are trained in CPR because you don’t know when it’s going to happen. 
• Ideally, it would be the goal of any CPR company to have CPR training for everybody. Is that realistic? Probably not; but the more people are certified, the better chances of survival you give to just about anyone who goes into cardiac arrest.