The Importance of "Meet and Greet" in CPR

"As soon as you determine that the patient is unresponsive send someone too call 9-1-1 and send one or two people outside of the building to meet professional responders (EMS/Fire/Police) and guide them to the patient."

I've taught CPR to thousands of students and of course many of them have taken CPR training previously.  To many of my students tell me that I am the first instructor that has ever mentioned this concept.  Meet and Greet is an important, and I believe undervalued, step in the management of out-of-hospital cardiovascular emergencies.

Whether Bystanders have achieved Return of Spontaneous Circulation (ROSC) prior to EMS arrival or are still working to do so, reducing the time to patient contact for professional responders will contribute significantly to improved outcomes.  In the "Cardiac Chain of Survival" the link immediately after "Early Defibrillation" is "Early Advanced Care".  Advanced Care begins when Paramedics start working the patient, not when the ambulance pulls up in front of the building.

If this were a 5,000 word essay I would regale you with stories of how excellent Meet and Greet contributed to lives saved and how the absence of Meet and Greet was a contributing factor to lives lost. Every Paramedic I know has at least one story of being locked out of a secure building or parking on the wrong side of a building or searching a property to find the patient.

CPR Instructors need to be teaching all of their students that whenever 9-1-1 is called and there is manpower available, get people outside, as far away from the building as is necessary to help professional responders make time saving decisions.  In the absence of Meet and Greet responders will usually park their vehicle at the front or main entrance to a building. In many cases (I always think of High Schools) the patient may be lying close to an entrance that is a few hundred yards from the front door. If there are multiple driveways onto the property get the greeters right out to the main road and direct EMS to the best access road (I always think of  Golf Courses).

Encourage organizations to have pre-determined Meet and Greet protocols and practice and review them during all CPR related exercises. In communities where Fire is tiered for medical response it is important to insure that there are people outside to bring members of both services to the patient.

Achieving the best possible survival rates for out-of-hospital cardiac arrest in your community requires that the big issues such as more and better Bystander CPR and more AED's be addressed. At the same time the sum of all the little things make a huge contribution and cannot be ignored.