Resuscitation. It’s not something staff, patients or families ever want to experience.

At the RCH, staff are trained annually to ensure they are confident in performing CPR, should they be in a situation where a patient requires resuscitation.

We spoke with resuscitation coordinator Jenny, who is responsible for making sure all medical, nursing and allied health staff throughout the hospital are trained in basic life support.

What does a typical day look like for you?

“My typical day would involve taking required equipment to a pre-set destination in the hospital and teaching teams the skills of basic life support depending on their scope of practice.”

“We run the skills sessions in team’s normal environments followed by a realistic scenario with real equipment, in real time, in real teams. For example, for educational play therapists we may run a session on the floor in the playroom. This makes every session as realistic as possible, so staff know what they may experience in a real life event.”

How intensive are the skills sessions?

“Once we know everyone is comfortable with performing the technical skills of CPR, we put teams into a mock scenario. Each team member has a role in the scenario, as they would if it happened in real life, and we see how far down the resuscitation algorithm the team gets in a three minute scenario. We then debrief the scenario, discuss what went well and what we could do better in relation to skills, teamwork, roles, and then finally we repeat the scenario again.”

What is a major reward of the job?

“The verbal feedback from real life events on how colleagues are performing in a crisis as a result of the program makes me proud of the results we are achieving. We are an amazing team doing amazing things for our organisation, as well as children around Victoria and Australia.”

What is the main challenge? 

“Trying to coordinate inter-disciplinary training to suit all teams; to be able to create real teams to train together, as in a real crisis we all need to know how to work together.”

What do you enjoy the most about your job?

“What I enjoy the most is when you see that ‘light bulb’ moment in someone when they understand something really clearly.”