Measuring a Nurse’s Career Through BLS

Julianna Paradisi, RN, OCN, is an oncology nurse navigator and writes a monthly post for this blog.

ParadisiBLSCertificationCardI was a child when I first heard the term CPR. My father, a volunteer fire captain in our community, had newly certified that day at drill. From the head of our dinner table he proclaimed, “It’s a terrible thing to have to do, but everyone should know how.”

He was right.

It feels as though I’ve known basic life support (BLS; sometimes still referred to as CPR) all my life, but I believe I was 16 years old when I first took a provider course, long before I knew I’d become a nurse.

Since then, as a former pediatric intensive care nurse, I have performed a lot of CPR, and a related professional compliment received during a pediatric resuscitation rests bittersweetly in my heart.

It was one of those codes that begins in the ED, and transfers into the PICU because survival is unlikely. The cause was cardiac. As I did compressions, and my colleague, a respiratory therapist, hand-ventilated the child, blood gases were drawn. The attending cardiologist looked over the results, and told us, “It’s too bad a perfect blood gas isn’t enough to save a life. The two of you are performing superb CPR.”

He was right. It wasn’t enough.

That was nearly 20 years ago. Basic life support recertification is required every two years. […]