Winner of Sudden Cardiac Arrest Foundation's You Can Save a Life Video Awareness Contest announced

Paramedic Students Use Social Media and Humor to Raise Awareness of CPR and AEDs

The Sudden Cardiac Arrest Foundation today announced the grand prize winner of its You Can Save a Life Video Awareness Contest. The student competition invited teams to submit videos about the impact of sudden cardiac arrest and the importance of CPR and automated external defibrillators (AEDs), empowering students and communities to make a difference in helping to save lives.

The grand prize winner is 911 Emergency ROCKsponse, a college team from Ontario, Canada, whose creative paramedic rap has already received more than 42,000 views and 240 comments on YouTube. The Foundation will award Ryan Chomiszak, the group's creator, with a new AED, three CPR Anytime™ kits, and a Nintendo Wii™ gaming system. Chomiszak will donate the AED and CPR Anytime kits to his college.

"We wanted to create a fun video that would motivate our class and help everyone get through paramedic training successfully," said Chomiszak, or 'DCMedicRyan' on YouTube. "We used comedy to engage the viewers' interest, but we take sudden cardiac arrest very seriously. While the medics in our video certainly aren't demonstrating proper technique, the steps they sing about are grounded in SCA protocol. As new paramedic graduates, we look forward to using this video, and our skills in the field, to help make a difference in improving SCA survival."

The Foundation's panel of judges reviewed the video entries for their overall message, creativity, originality, degree of student participation and likelihood to raise awareness. While technical accuracy was not a key focus in the judging, one of the objectives of the contest and its prizes is to encourage the development—through awareness and training—of potentially life-saving skills. Contest finalists and winners are featured on the Foundation's YouTube Channel (https://www.youtube.com/SCAFoundation).

"We applaud 911 Emergency ROCKsponse's use of humor to generate interest in emergency response to sudden cardiac arrest, a condition that can strike anyone at any time, including students, teachers and community members in schools and on playing fields," said Mary Newman, president of the Sudden Cardiac Arrest Foundation. "This kind of positive energy is helping to foster a new generation of people who are ready, willing and able to help. Ultimately, this generation has the power to increase survival from the nation's leading cause of death."