What do the classic hit “Stayin’ Alive” by the Bee Gees and Sabrina Carpenter’s first Billboard Hot 100 chart topper have in common? They can help to save lives.
In June, the American Heart Association asked its Instagram followers to “Please, Please, Please” learn CPR, pointing out the hit Carpenter song can help resuscitators stay on rhythm. A few months later, three Texas nurses decided to put it to the test. With more than 966,000 views, the trendy TikTok video has turned into a health care hit.
“Please, Please, Please” proved a hit for Carpenter, too, having reached over 1 billion plays on Spotify. What makes it a hit for health care, however, has more to do with its rhythm section.
When performing CPR, there is a “sweet spot” for chest compressions. According to the AMA, compressions should be completed at a rate somewhere between 100 and 120 per minute. At 107 beats per minute, “Please, Please, Please” can serve as a proverbial metronome for anyone administering CPR.
Texas nurses Julie Watson, Nicole Curry and Alyssa Gonzalez took to TikTok to show how the hit song can save lives.
“The mannequin corrects you if you’re doing it too fast or too slow, but it never corrected us,” Watson told Today. “So, we were like, ‘Yeah, it works!’”
“Basically, we have to do what’s called RQI, which is like quarterly training for CPR,” Curry added. “You practice with mannequins and things like that. We had seen on TikTok that this could be the correct rate.”
The social media post eventually grabbed the attention of the AMA. The nurses’ approval at the end of the CPR test “was the reassurance we needed,” the association commented on the video.
For information on how to perform CPR, visit cpr.heart.org/en/resources/what-is-cpr.
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