Ryan Coute, D.O., assistant professor in the UAB Department of Emergency Medicine, has been awarded an R03 grant from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute to improve the way 9-1-1 dispatchers guide bystanders through CPR when a child is experiencing cardiac arrest outside of a hospital. The award marks the second R03 grant received by the UAB Department of Emergency Medicine in more than 5 years, reflecting the department’s growing research enterprise.
Each year, thousands of children experience out-of-hospital cardiac arrest in the U.S. When a child’s heart stops, the minutes before emergency medical services arrive are critical, and bystanders who perform CPR can make a life-saving difference. But CPR for children differs from adult CPR, and the real-time instructions that 9-1-1 telecommunicators provide in those high-stakes moments may not be worded in ways that help a bystander act quickly and correctly.
The study, “Adapting Telecommunicator CPR Instructions to Enhance Layperson Response to Pediatric Cardiac Arrest,” will examine the specific language 9-1-1 professionals use when coaching community members through pediatric CPR in real time. The goal is to determine whether changes to that wording can help bystanders deliver higher-quality compressions and ultimately improve a child’s chances of survival.
The funding comes through an NIH R03 research grant, a highly competitive grant the NIH awards to support focused, early-phase scientific investigations. R03 grants are often used to generate the foundational data and evidence base needed to pursue larger, longer-term studies, making them a critical first step in a researcher’s federal funding portfolio.
“When a child goes into cardiac arrest, the outcome often depends on what happens in the minutes before paramedics arrive,” Coute said. “9-1-1 dispatchers are doing extraordinary work under enormous pressure, but the science of how we word CPR instructions over the telephone, especially for pediatric patients, is still developing. This grant gives us the opportunity to study that question and build the evidence base for better, more effective guidance.”
The study focuses on telecommunicator CPR, or T-CPR, the practice of 9-1-1 dispatchers coaching bystanders through CPR while emergency responders are in transit. T-CPR has been shown to improve CPR delivery for adults and children, but less is known about the overall quality of the CPR provided. By studying the precise language dispatchers use and how it affects bystander performance, the research aims to produce practical, evidence-based recommendations that can be implemented to improve the quality of CPR instructions provided by 9-1-1 centers nationwide.