Selected Podcast
Early Heart Attack Care
Ms. Stacey Raughley talks about early heart attack care. Ms. Raughley gives information on the risk factors for a heart attack, the importance of calling 911, signs, symptoms, and ways to reduce the likelihood of a heart attack.
Featuring:
Stacey Raughley, MSN, RN, CCRN-K, CPHQ
Since July 2019, Stacey has served as Chest Pain Coordinator and Performance Excellence Consultant for the Cardiovascular Service Line. She has been an employee of St. Joseph’s Health Hospital since 2002. Master's prepared and nationally certified registered nurse with 19 years experience in critical care and cardiac services. Highly skilled in leading interdisciplinary teams by applying effective problem-solving techniques, identifying root causes to concerns, and developing standardized processes to generate excellent patient outcomes. Stacey is native to Syracuse; her alma mater is East Syracuse-Minoa High School. She chose the nursing profession as her second career, a graduate of St. Joseph’s College of Nursing, BSN graduate of Upstate Medical University, and MSN graduate of Keuka College. She actively instructs BLS, ACLS, and Hands-Only CPR to healthcare professionals and community members. Stacey strives to inspire colleagues with innovative thoughts to positively impact the delivery of care to patients and families of our healthcare system. She has tenacity and spirit; fueled by close, nurtured relationships and underwater scuba diving escapes!
Transcription:
Prakash Chandran (Host): Heart disease is one of the leading causes of death in the United States. Unfortunately, people delayed care during the height of COVID, which led to unnecessary complications and even death. If someone is having a heart attack, time is of the essence, and it's important to call 911 immediately, but equally important is knowing what to do while you wait for help to arrive.
Every month is Heart Month at St. Joseph's Health. And we offer the very best cardiac care in the region. Today we're joined by Stacey Raughley, a Performance Excellence Consultant, and a Chest Pain Coordinator at St. Joseph's Health. And we're going to cover the basics of heart disease, early heart attack care, and being proactive with our heart health.
This is St. Joseph's Health Med Cast from St. Joseph's Health. My name is Prakash Chandran and Stacey, thank you so much for joining me today. I really appreciate your time. Before we get into it, I see that it says that you're a Performance Excellence Consultant. What exactly does that mean?
Stacey Raughley RN (Guest): Absolutely. And thank you for having me today. Performance excellence really is looking at the quality of our care that we've delivered to the patients. Have it be that they're coming in through our primary care facilities, how they're transitioning into our hospital, through their hospital stay, upon discharge and back through their primary or say their cardiologists, once they are discharged from the hospital. We take a look at their quality. We measure ourselves against metrics, have it be within the state, our community, or a national, looking at guidelines, best practices that are measured through like the American College of Cardiology, to see where we measure up and to identify opportunities of improvement, to continue to deliver that best care possible to our patients and their family.
Host: Yeah, absolutely. I can see why St. Joseph's has that stamp of the very best cardiac care in the region. You know, today we are talking about early heart attack care, heart attack symptoms, signs and about heart disease in general. So I thought I'd get started by building a foundation around what are the risk factors of getting heart disease in the first place or having a heart attack?
Stacey: So the risk factors are very important because you know, one of the statistics, thank you for clarifying some of those statistics at the beginning, 16.5 million Americans, age 20 and older are living with coronary heart disease and they don't even know it. So, by establishing those relationships with a physician to take a look at what some of those risk factors that they may have, have it be high blood pressure, knowing what your average blood pressure may be, 120/80 yep. It's ideal. Anything greater than that? It started to keep an eye on. When it comes to being overweight, you're sedentary lifestyle, using tobacco products, which you know, within our community here, there is quite a large tobacco use. When it comes to having metabolic disease or diabetes or any other illnesses that might attribute to having an increased risk factor and that chance of a heart attack.
So there's also like family, cause we can all say that, you know, I'm great in all the factors, but then there's genetics. So genetics play an key important factor where the cholesterol level is. You know, I know personally, I always argue with my primary. I'm like, but I don't have any other risk factors except for genetic.
And you know, my, where is my risk fall that I have high cholesterol, I'm eating all the right foods that I'm supposed to eat. But I'm still driving a high cholesterol level. It's my good old genetics. So when it comes to genetics, those are things that we cannot change, but we have other modifiable risk factors that we could change to be able to improve our overall heart health.
And that is, you know, when it comes to exercise and watching what we're eating and knowing what some of our preliminary factors are when it comes to blood pressure and BMI and our cholesterol levels. We can modify stopping smoking and we can increase the exercise to be able to help working in the right direction to modify some of them.
Host: Wow. So there's a lot to unpack there. And the first, I guess, is around numbers. You know, I've always heard that people should know their numbers. You mentioned like 120/80 is ideal in terms of your blood pressure, but keep an eye on it, if it's higher. There seems like some key numbers that people should know. So I'd love for you to tell us what those are.
Stacey: So when it comes to BMI, what your overall weight is, your circumference of your waist to know exactly where you might fall in the obese factor. Your blood pressure with systolic being that top number. When I say 120 and the diastolic number. Know where you technically live. If you are somebody that has a higher blood pressure than normal. Some folks even like to keep an eye on their heart rate, you know. Are you someone that does exercise and work out, generally tend to run a lower heart rate of like say 60, 70, or is it something that's running consistently above a hundred where, you know, they refer to like more of a fast heart rate, but really understanding what could be driving that. Is it too much caffeine? Is, you know, some of our younger folks they like to drink those Monster drinks, which drive some of that, the caffeine, sugary products when the sugar and how it can enter into diabetes to know where your blood sugars are normally, where they can screen for that.
And take a look at a test that can look back three months. It is known as your hemoglobin A1C. So understanding where a fasting blood glucose would be, which is something that you are fasting for and your primary care physician would draw the blood and determine where that baseline blood sugar is when you haven't been eating. So they'll take a look at those numbers.
Host: Okay, that makes a lot of sense. I want to move on to symptoms of a heart attack. Can you talk a little bit about the signs or symptoms that men and women should look out for and how they differ between the two?
Stacey: Okay. So there's definitely some differences, what you know exactly what to pay attention to. So some men they'll normally feel pain and numbness in their left arm, the side of their chest, but usually sometimes in women, these symptoms may appear on the right. So men will think, oh, it's coming down my left arm. I just lost feeling to my fingers. I'm having this, you know, this, everything that is going on the left side. Where it comes to women, we could generally sometimes feel that on our right side. Women may feel completely exhausted, drained, dizzy, or nauseous. And I'm thinking, well, that's me on a daily event, but you don't knowing what is different that you're feeling that you've never felt before, like something is off. Women may feel upper back pain that travels up into their jaw. Women may feel, may think that their stomach pain is the flu or it's something that they ate the night before, or I'll take a Tums or I'm worrying about one of their children or whatever stress factor that they have going on their life.
So ideally keeping in mind that heart disease also kills more women than all forms of cancers combined. So when it comes to being a female and I believe Dr. Kitt provided a beautiful podcast in the most recent past about women taking care of themselves and being able to provide that self-care.
So a great podcast by the way, to listen to. It was wonderful. Some atypical presentations could be like a sharp knife-like pain that occurs when like they're coughing or breathing for both men and women. Pain that could spread above the jaw bone or even into the lower body or difficulty and labored breathing.
So ideally if you're having that pain where it just feels different, like that chest pressure. We've had folks, even in my family members have, it felt like, you know, an elephant was sitting on their chest where they felt that they couldn't take or really swallow very much, where they felt like something was caught in their throat as a female.
So paying attention to what's going on. Is it different chest pressure that you've never felt before? Some folks will get very sweaty as we refer to as diaphoretic. They were very sweaty where even their color changes that they could be looking more like a gray in color. So, it is definitely signs and symptoms to pay attention to that warrant that 911 call to bring in that emergency care fast and furious to be able to get to St Joe's. So it would to be able to take care of the heart.
Host: Now I want to kind of emphasize that last point that you made the importance of calling 911, because I know that some people think that they might be able to wait it out or go to urgent care. Can you talk about why it's so important to call 911?
Stacey: Absolutely. It's so important. Another fun fact is about 70% of out-of-hospital cardiac arrests where in cardiac arrest. What that means is when someone stops breathing and their heart stops pumping. They could happen in the home. And when that happens, if we've had those symptoms and we haven't paid attention to. We can ultimately result in cardiac arrest when a loved one or a bystandard or even the individual themselves are calling 911, that will dispatch our EMS, our ambulance providers, fire companies to come right to the location. So at that time they would be gathering some really important information about how the patient's feeling, what they're looking like, what their vital signs, and they will actually place them right on a 12-lead device for an EKG so that you, EKG is basically a picture of electricity that is going on in the heart. And that can be transmitted right into our emergency department even before the patient gets here. So we can already start interpreting and speaking one-on-one with our ambulance crews to see how the patient is doing, what is going on, delivering that care even before the patient gets here.
So we refer to our ambulance crews as first medical contacts. So to give you a little time factor, we want to keep our first medical contact to reprofusion, but reprofusion is been our cath lab team has gone in and actually found the artery or that blood flow, that's creating that problem. And it's for lack of better words of just unplugging it and getting that blood flow.
We want that to be able to occur in 90 minutes from the time that the EMS arrives and is in front of the patient to the time that we've done a coronary intervention to unclog and unblock that artery, that clot that is sitting in that blood flow, because we have to keep in mind that time is muscle. So for every minute that goes by where blood flow is not flowing to the heart or that area of the heart, that muscle tends to die off and not work as effectively. So by getting that quick intervention to have it happen sooner than later.
Host: Yeah, that totally makes sense to me. And by calling 911, because they are the first responders and they're doing all those diagnostics, they're effectively pre-triaging before you get to the hospital. And that's going to give you your best chance of not only survival, but recovery. Is that more or less correct?
Stacey: That is absolutely correct. And we've had some patients where they go to urgent care first, and that has only delayed in the time of their care. So by calling 911 to get that immediate assistance by our first medical, you know, from our early responders to be able to get the actions and bringing them into our hospitals sooner.
Host: So I'd love to talk about a scenario where a person has a friend or a loved one that they think might be having a cardiac event. They do the right thing, they call 911. Now we all know that help doesn't arrive instantly. So what can that person do to improve the chances for a better outcome before the ambulance arrives?
Stacey: So by calling 911, 911 would provide instructions of what medications to give such as aspirin. So they would give immediate instructions of what to occur to be able to have that patient monitored and prepped and ready for the EMS to arrive. Stay with the patient, stay with your loved one, I should say. If you're sitting around a table, making sure that they're in an area where they're comfortable if any of the events, which another statistic for you about 46, 46% of people who experience an out of hospital cardiac arrest only receive immediate help if they need before the professional help arrive.
So if all of a sudden your loved one becomes unresponsive, where you see them, where they slumped in the chair, or they've stopped talking, or they've stopped breathing, immediately lower them to the floor, put their back to the floor where you can have that hard surface behind them. And that's when we lead into what can you do as a bystander.
What can you do as a loved one? And we talk about hands only CPR. What that is is that you after you called 911, you place that 911 operator on speakerphone. They will be able to continue with instructions and listening to you, and you find the center of the chest of your loved one, and you push hard and fast, hard, and fast that can deliver about a 100 to 120 per minute. So some folks are like, what are a 100-120 beats. But if we think about some of the songs, like, you know, Staying Alive by the Bee Gees, or Crazy in Love by Beyonce. There's another one walk-in line by Johnny Cash, depending on your genre. They have a specific beat that helps deliver that tempo to be able to help with those compressions and that blood flow until our responders, our first responders arrive to be able to take over and manage the care.
Host: So let's talk a little bit about prevention. What can people do to reduce the likelihood of heart disease in the first place?
Stacey: Well, when it comes to prevention is first of all, knowing your signs, second of all making sure that you have a good reputation not necessarily a reputation, but you have a good relationship with your primary physician. If you haven't been to the doctors in a while, you don't know your numbers. Seek out, getting primary care, establishing care so that you have that continuity of care with your provider.
If you're someone that technically lives a sedentary life that happens to like the hang out on the couch a little bit more, maybe establishing a 20 to 30 minute walk every day, getting that exercise. If you're a smoker, there is wonderful resources through New York State to be able to quit smoking.
There's a 1-800 state number that folks can call and give all sorts of tips and tricks. Which New York State smokers hotline number is 1-866-697-8487. So they have wonderful tips that they could provide to help you work through it. They also have a website which is www.nysmokefree.com. So that's an, also a modifiable risk factors to stop smoking. And when it comes to understanding your family history and family history of what your parents and grandparents and what they have experienced in the past, to know what sort of risk factors that are not modifiable, that you've been born into to understand exactly where they lie.
Host: And another important piece of this is just being vigilant with your own health and really paying attention to when there are changes, right? Because you can be completely healthy, but if something changes that might be something that your primary care physician might need to know.
Stacey: Absolutely. Absolutely. And you know, sometimes when it even comes to working with your colleagues, like if you know, you know them and like, hey I'm feeling off. Something's not right. It's just kind of get that alert. Something's going on so that you have a little bit keener, you know, awareness for God forbid than anything happens, you know, in front of them where they know they can institute an emergency call. Being able to vocalize it rather than, you know, ignoring symptoms making that phone call to try to get in to a primary care. But if you're having this certain signs and symptoms of a heart attack, 911 is the very first call that you should be making.
Host: And just before we close, one of the things that you had mentioned before we hit the record button was an app that a friend or a bystander could use to help basically facilitate assistance before help arrived. Is that something that you can speak to?
Stacey: Sure. Absolutely. What St. Joe's yes, as you said that every heart is heart month to us. We are also accredited as a chest pain with primary PCI. Which, what that means is that we have a cath lab onsite that to deliver that immediate intervention. And we also are accredited with resuscitation which we take a really good look at all of the out of hospital cardiac arrests.
So through that, we are accredited by the American College of Cardiology. And they have partnered with a program that is referred to as EHAC, which is EHAC. It's also known as early heart attack care. And the purpose of this program is to promote public awareness that heart attack have beginnings.
So even in a simple Google search of have it be early heart attack care or a Deputy Heart Attack. There is a course that the community can take that is all about 10 minutes, that will go over all sorts of risk factors and what to do when it comes to hands-only CPR and calling 911. So again, just, you know, ehac.org or Deputy Heart Attack. And getting in there and there's like a free education and a free little course that folks can take to heighten their awareness and their knowledge when it comes to heart attacks having beginnings, what are the risk factors, the signs and symptoms and where to go and what to do if in the event, someone around you or you are personally experiencing a heart attack.
Host: Well Stacey, this has been a really informative conversation. Just before we close here, is there anything else you'd like to share with our audience today?
Stacey: It's Heart Month. We have American Heart Walk coming up in the month of April, take care of your heart. We all have big hearts out there that carry on a lot of love and affection and attention for so many. So take care of your heart, find your primary care, establish your relationships with them. I've been a member, you know, a patient of mine. I've been with my primary care for well over 30 years. And it's wonderful to, to base that knowledge and that relationship to just to be able to explain how you're feeling. So, I appreciate the time and being able to promote all the awareness and heart attacks having beginnings and what to do in the event that you are having one. So thank you very much for this time.
Host: Well, thank you so much. And that's wonderful advice and really appreciate your time today Stacey.
Stacey: Thank you.
Host: That was Stacey Raughley, a Performance Excellence Consultant, and a Chest Pain Coordinator at St. Joseph's Health. For more information, you can visit sjhsyr.org. And go to the Cardiovascular Institute page. If you found this podcast to be helpful, please share it on your social channels and be sure to check out the entire podcast library for topics of interest to you. This has been St. Joseph's Health Med Cast from St. Joseph's Health. My name is Prakash Chandran. Thanks so much, and we'll talk next time.
Prakash Chandran (Host): Heart disease is one of the leading causes of death in the United States. Unfortunately, people delayed care during the height of COVID, which led to unnecessary complications and even death. If someone is having a heart attack, time is of the essence, and it's important to call 911 immediately, but equally important is knowing what to do while you wait for help to arrive.
Every month is Heart Month at St. Joseph's Health. And we offer the very best cardiac care in the region. Today we're joined by Stacey Raughley, a Performance Excellence Consultant, and a Chest Pain Coordinator at St. Joseph's Health. And we're going to cover the basics of heart disease, early heart attack care, and being proactive with our heart health.
This is St. Joseph's Health Med Cast from St. Joseph's Health. My name is Prakash Chandran and Stacey, thank you so much for joining me today. I really appreciate your time. Before we get into it, I see that it says that you're a Performance Excellence Consultant. What exactly does that mean?
Stacey Raughley RN (Guest): Absolutely. And thank you for having me today. Performance excellence really is looking at the quality of our care that we've delivered to the patients. Have it be that they're coming in through our primary care facilities, how they're transitioning into our hospital, through their hospital stay, upon discharge and back through their primary or say their cardiologists, once they are discharged from the hospital. We take a look at their quality. We measure ourselves against metrics, have it be within the state, our community, or a national, looking at guidelines, best practices that are measured through like the American College of Cardiology, to see where we measure up and to identify opportunities of improvement, to continue to deliver that best care possible to our patients and their family.
Host: Yeah, absolutely. I can see why St. Joseph's has that stamp of the very best cardiac care in the region. You know, today we are talking about early heart attack care, heart attack symptoms, signs and about heart disease in general. So I thought I'd get started by building a foundation around what are the risk factors of getting heart disease in the first place or having a heart attack?
Stacey: So the risk factors are very important because you know, one of the statistics, thank you for clarifying some of those statistics at the beginning, 16.5 million Americans, age 20 and older are living with coronary heart disease and they don't even know it. So, by establishing those relationships with a physician to take a look at what some of those risk factors that they may have, have it be high blood pressure, knowing what your average blood pressure may be, 120/80 yep. It's ideal. Anything greater than that? It started to keep an eye on. When it comes to being overweight, you're sedentary lifestyle, using tobacco products, which you know, within our community here, there is quite a large tobacco use. When it comes to having metabolic disease or diabetes or any other illnesses that might attribute to having an increased risk factor and that chance of a heart attack.
So there's also like family, cause we can all say that, you know, I'm great in all the factors, but then there's genetics. So genetics play an key important factor where the cholesterol level is. You know, I know personally, I always argue with my primary. I'm like, but I don't have any other risk factors except for genetic.
And you know, my, where is my risk fall that I have high cholesterol, I'm eating all the right foods that I'm supposed to eat. But I'm still driving a high cholesterol level. It's my good old genetics. So when it comes to genetics, those are things that we cannot change, but we have other modifiable risk factors that we could change to be able to improve our overall heart health.
And that is, you know, when it comes to exercise and watching what we're eating and knowing what some of our preliminary factors are when it comes to blood pressure and BMI and our cholesterol levels. We can modify stopping smoking and we can increase the exercise to be able to help working in the right direction to modify some of them.
Host: Wow. So there's a lot to unpack there. And the first, I guess, is around numbers. You know, I've always heard that people should know their numbers. You mentioned like 120/80 is ideal in terms of your blood pressure, but keep an eye on it, if it's higher. There seems like some key numbers that people should know. So I'd love for you to tell us what those are.
Stacey: So when it comes to BMI, what your overall weight is, your circumference of your waist to know exactly where you might fall in the obese factor. Your blood pressure with systolic being that top number. When I say 120 and the diastolic number. Know where you technically live. If you are somebody that has a higher blood pressure than normal. Some folks even like to keep an eye on their heart rate, you know. Are you someone that does exercise and work out, generally tend to run a lower heart rate of like say 60, 70, or is it something that's running consistently above a hundred where, you know, they refer to like more of a fast heart rate, but really understanding what could be driving that. Is it too much caffeine? Is, you know, some of our younger folks they like to drink those Monster drinks, which drive some of that, the caffeine, sugary products when the sugar and how it can enter into diabetes to know where your blood sugars are normally, where they can screen for that.
And take a look at a test that can look back three months. It is known as your hemoglobin A1C. So understanding where a fasting blood glucose would be, which is something that you are fasting for and your primary care physician would draw the blood and determine where that baseline blood sugar is when you haven't been eating. So they'll take a look at those numbers.
Host: Okay, that makes a lot of sense. I want to move on to symptoms of a heart attack. Can you talk a little bit about the signs or symptoms that men and women should look out for and how they differ between the two?
Stacey: Okay. So there's definitely some differences, what you know exactly what to pay attention to. So some men they'll normally feel pain and numbness in their left arm, the side of their chest, but usually sometimes in women, these symptoms may appear on the right. So men will think, oh, it's coming down my left arm. I just lost feeling to my fingers. I'm having this, you know, this, everything that is going on the left side. Where it comes to women, we could generally sometimes feel that on our right side. Women may feel completely exhausted, drained, dizzy, or nauseous. And I'm thinking, well, that's me on a daily event, but you don't knowing what is different that you're feeling that you've never felt before, like something is off. Women may feel upper back pain that travels up into their jaw. Women may feel, may think that their stomach pain is the flu or it's something that they ate the night before, or I'll take a Tums or I'm worrying about one of their children or whatever stress factor that they have going on their life.
So ideally keeping in mind that heart disease also kills more women than all forms of cancers combined. So when it comes to being a female and I believe Dr. Kitt provided a beautiful podcast in the most recent past about women taking care of themselves and being able to provide that self-care.
So a great podcast by the way, to listen to. It was wonderful. Some atypical presentations could be like a sharp knife-like pain that occurs when like they're coughing or breathing for both men and women. Pain that could spread above the jaw bone or even into the lower body or difficulty and labored breathing.
So ideally if you're having that pain where it just feels different, like that chest pressure. We've had folks, even in my family members have, it felt like, you know, an elephant was sitting on their chest where they felt that they couldn't take or really swallow very much, where they felt like something was caught in their throat as a female.
So paying attention to what's going on. Is it different chest pressure that you've never felt before? Some folks will get very sweaty as we refer to as diaphoretic. They were very sweaty where even their color changes that they could be looking more like a gray in color. So, it is definitely signs and symptoms to pay attention to that warrant that 911 call to bring in that emergency care fast and furious to be able to get to St Joe's. So it would to be able to take care of the heart.
Host: Now I want to kind of emphasize that last point that you made the importance of calling 911, because I know that some people think that they might be able to wait it out or go to urgent care. Can you talk about why it's so important to call 911?
Stacey: Absolutely. It's so important. Another fun fact is about 70% of out-of-hospital cardiac arrests where in cardiac arrest. What that means is when someone stops breathing and their heart stops pumping. They could happen in the home. And when that happens, if we've had those symptoms and we haven't paid attention to. We can ultimately result in cardiac arrest when a loved one or a bystandard or even the individual themselves are calling 911, that will dispatch our EMS, our ambulance providers, fire companies to come right to the location. So at that time they would be gathering some really important information about how the patient's feeling, what they're looking like, what their vital signs, and they will actually place them right on a 12-lead device for an EKG so that you, EKG is basically a picture of electricity that is going on in the heart. And that can be transmitted right into our emergency department even before the patient gets here. So we can already start interpreting and speaking one-on-one with our ambulance crews to see how the patient is doing, what is going on, delivering that care even before the patient gets here.
So we refer to our ambulance crews as first medical contacts. So to give you a little time factor, we want to keep our first medical contact to reprofusion, but reprofusion is been our cath lab team has gone in and actually found the artery or that blood flow, that's creating that problem. And it's for lack of better words of just unplugging it and getting that blood flow.
We want that to be able to occur in 90 minutes from the time that the EMS arrives and is in front of the patient to the time that we've done a coronary intervention to unclog and unblock that artery, that clot that is sitting in that blood flow, because we have to keep in mind that time is muscle. So for every minute that goes by where blood flow is not flowing to the heart or that area of the heart, that muscle tends to die off and not work as effectively. So by getting that quick intervention to have it happen sooner than later.
Host: Yeah, that totally makes sense to me. And by calling 911, because they are the first responders and they're doing all those diagnostics, they're effectively pre-triaging before you get to the hospital. And that's going to give you your best chance of not only survival, but recovery. Is that more or less correct?
Stacey: That is absolutely correct. And we've had some patients where they go to urgent care first, and that has only delayed in the time of their care. So by calling 911 to get that immediate assistance by our first medical, you know, from our early responders to be able to get the actions and bringing them into our hospitals sooner.
Host: So I'd love to talk about a scenario where a person has a friend or a loved one that they think might be having a cardiac event. They do the right thing, they call 911. Now we all know that help doesn't arrive instantly. So what can that person do to improve the chances for a better outcome before the ambulance arrives?
Stacey: So by calling 911, 911 would provide instructions of what medications to give such as aspirin. So they would give immediate instructions of what to occur to be able to have that patient monitored and prepped and ready for the EMS to arrive. Stay with the patient, stay with your loved one, I should say. If you're sitting around a table, making sure that they're in an area where they're comfortable if any of the events, which another statistic for you about 46, 46% of people who experience an out of hospital cardiac arrest only receive immediate help if they need before the professional help arrive.
So if all of a sudden your loved one becomes unresponsive, where you see them, where they slumped in the chair, or they've stopped talking, or they've stopped breathing, immediately lower them to the floor, put their back to the floor where you can have that hard surface behind them. And that's when we lead into what can you do as a bystander.
What can you do as a loved one? And we talk about hands only CPR. What that is is that you after you called 911, you place that 911 operator on speakerphone. They will be able to continue with instructions and listening to you, and you find the center of the chest of your loved one, and you push hard and fast, hard, and fast that can deliver about a 100 to 120 per minute. So some folks are like, what are a 100-120 beats. But if we think about some of the songs, like, you know, Staying Alive by the Bee Gees, or Crazy in Love by Beyonce. There's another one walk-in line by Johnny Cash, depending on your genre. They have a specific beat that helps deliver that tempo to be able to help with those compressions and that blood flow until our responders, our first responders arrive to be able to take over and manage the care.
Host: So let's talk a little bit about prevention. What can people do to reduce the likelihood of heart disease in the first place?
Stacey: Well, when it comes to prevention is first of all, knowing your signs, second of all making sure that you have a good reputation not necessarily a reputation, but you have a good relationship with your primary physician. If you haven't been to the doctors in a while, you don't know your numbers. Seek out, getting primary care, establishing care so that you have that continuity of care with your provider.
If you're someone that technically lives a sedentary life that happens to like the hang out on the couch a little bit more, maybe establishing a 20 to 30 minute walk every day, getting that exercise. If you're a smoker, there is wonderful resources through New York State to be able to quit smoking.
There's a 1-800 state number that folks can call and give all sorts of tips and tricks. Which New York State smokers hotline number is 1-866-697-8487. So they have wonderful tips that they could provide to help you work through it. They also have a website which is www.nysmokefree.com. So that's an, also a modifiable risk factors to stop smoking. And when it comes to understanding your family history and family history of what your parents and grandparents and what they have experienced in the past, to know what sort of risk factors that are not modifiable, that you've been born into to understand exactly where they lie.
Host: And another important piece of this is just being vigilant with your own health and really paying attention to when there are changes, right? Because you can be completely healthy, but if something changes that might be something that your primary care physician might need to know.
Stacey: Absolutely. Absolutely. And you know, sometimes when it even comes to working with your colleagues, like if you know, you know them and like, hey I'm feeling off. Something's not right. It's just kind of get that alert. Something's going on so that you have a little bit keener, you know, awareness for God forbid than anything happens, you know, in front of them where they know they can institute an emergency call. Being able to vocalize it rather than, you know, ignoring symptoms making that phone call to try to get in to a primary care. But if you're having this certain signs and symptoms of a heart attack, 911 is the very first call that you should be making.
Host: And just before we close, one of the things that you had mentioned before we hit the record button was an app that a friend or a bystander could use to help basically facilitate assistance before help arrived. Is that something that you can speak to?
Stacey: Sure. Absolutely. What St. Joe's yes, as you said that every heart is heart month to us. We are also accredited as a chest pain with primary PCI. Which, what that means is that we have a cath lab onsite that to deliver that immediate intervention. And we also are accredited with resuscitation which we take a really good look at all of the out of hospital cardiac arrests.
So through that, we are accredited by the American College of Cardiology. And they have partnered with a program that is referred to as EHAC, which is EHAC. It's also known as early heart attack care. And the purpose of this program is to promote public awareness that heart attack have beginnings.
So even in a simple Google search of have it be early heart attack care or a Deputy Heart Attack. There is a course that the community can take that is all about 10 minutes, that will go over all sorts of risk factors and what to do when it comes to hands-only CPR and calling 911. So again, just, you know, ehac.org or Deputy Heart Attack. And getting in there and there's like a free education and a free little course that folks can take to heighten their awareness and their knowledge when it comes to heart attacks having beginnings, what are the risk factors, the signs and symptoms and where to go and what to do if in the event, someone around you or you are personally experiencing a heart attack.
Host: Well Stacey, this has been a really informative conversation. Just before we close here, is there anything else you'd like to share with our audience today?
Stacey: It's Heart Month. We have American Heart Walk coming up in the month of April, take care of your heart. We all have big hearts out there that carry on a lot of love and affection and attention for so many. So take care of your heart, find your primary care, establish your relationships with them. I've been a member, you know, a patient of mine. I've been with my primary care for well over 30 years. And it's wonderful to, to base that knowledge and that relationship to just to be able to explain how you're feeling. So, I appreciate the time and being able to promote all the awareness and heart attacks having beginnings and what to do in the event that you are having one. So thank you very much for this time.
Host: Well, thank you so much. And that's wonderful advice and really appreciate your time today Stacey.
Stacey: Thank you.
Host: That was Stacey Raughley, a Performance Excellence Consultant, and a Chest Pain Coordinator at St. Joseph's Health. For more information, you can visit sjhsyr.org. And go to the Cardiovascular Institute page. If you found this podcast to be helpful, please share it on your social channels and be sure to check out the entire podcast library for topics of interest to you. This has been St. Joseph's Health Med Cast from St. Joseph's Health. My name is Prakash Chandran. Thanks so much, and we'll talk next time.