Culver Academies offers new course that teaches essential life-saving skills

Culver Academies began offering a class this year called Emergency Medical Response aimed at teaching students essential life-saving skills.

Wellness education instructor Ryan Fought said the goal of the twice-weekly, one-term class is to introduce students to the idea of what it is like to work in the first-responder field. The class offers a scenario-based approach to develop the critical-thinking and problem-solving skills needed when people’s lives are in danger.

The course covers anatomy, giving cardiopulmonary resuscitation under various stressful situations, including to children and infants, how to use an automated external defibrillator, basic first aid, such as how to make a tourniquet and how to treat different types of cuts, how to work as part of a health-care team and basic fitness.

“The goal is to give students the robust skill knowledge for CPR, AED and first aid,” Fought said.

Students are given a scenario, such as they are in a restaurant where a patient is choking and their heart has stopped, so what should they do? What do they do for someone pulled out of the water after a near drowning or for someone who had been shocked? Students are graded on how they react.

Aidan Liu ’26 said both his parents are doctors so he thought it would be a good idea for him to take the Emergency Medical Response class.

“I thought it was important that if a friend gets hurt, I can do something to help,” he said.

Kate Fortune ’26 said she’s interested in joining the military and thought an in-depth emergency response medical class would be helpful.

“I liked that it was fast-paced and you had to put yourself in a certain situation and go from there. I thought that was very beneficial,” Fortune said. “You definitely learn skills that would be very useful to have in emergency situations.”

 

 

But it isn’t simply CPR training, it is working with others to respond to a variety of complicated scenarios to help make sure the victim survives.

Fought throws in curveballs along the way so students are constantly forced to think about what they need to do next.

“We also want to teach the students how to interview the victim to get them to respond in a way that’s going to tell you what the problem is,” Fought said.

The students are taught the first person on the scene is the primary leader and others are given other duties as they arrive.

“So we focus on how to be a good member of a team and what role to take,” Fortune said. “If you’re the third person on the scene, your job is going to be take over CPR after that first person gets tired, to ask what they need, to be an active listener.”

She said she learned the importance of listening carefully to what the person in need of assistance is saying.

“You need to be a communicative team member to help this person to survive,” she said. “That was a key takeaway of that class is learning to communicate in a team. Because if you can be highly effective and efficient team, the person is more likely to survive.”

Fought said the class is ideal for anyone interested in a career in a medical field. He said it’s a great class for someone interested in becoming an emergency medical technician.

“It’s creating a path for them to see it before they have a vested interest. If they have interest, it just builds,” he said. “It creates avenues for them.”

He said some students might learn from the class they’re not interested in a career in a medical field.

“Better to learn that here at Culver than in your second year of college,” Fought said. 

The class is the latest addition as Culver continues to build its wellness education curriculum, especially for students with an interest in the medical fields.

Fortune said she highly recommends the class.

“If you’re looking to be in a health-care field, a firefighter or an EMT or a career in the military, this is the class you want to take,” she said. “Or if you are just worried about the people around you, if you have grandparents or parents prone to health issues, this is the class to take if you want to be the best citizen you can be to those around you and help people survive.”

Liu said the hands-on experience is invaluable.

“You can watch a YouTube video on how to do CPR. But you’ll never really know until you have hands-on experience,” he said. “We did CPR almost every day.”

Fortune said she has no doubt she’s ready to help someone in a health emergency, especially someone needing CPR.

“I would feel confident giving CPR to someone if I saw them and they were in cardiac arrest,” she said.