In 2021, three ETSU pre-med students saw an opportunity to make a life-saving skill more accessible. They founded ETSU EM/ERGE (Emergency Medicine Club), an organization dedicated to educating emergency medicine and preparedness in East Tennessee.
CPR certification courses can cost upwards of $100, but EM/ERGE offers training sessions for $50. Each session lasts approximately three hours and includes hands-on instruction where participants will demonstrate two minutes of continuous CPR to receive certification. The training also covers first aid, lightning strike response and drowning prevention.
“If someone needs CPR, it has to be immediate — there’s no waiting,” said Ava Yobst, president of EM/ERGE. “If there is a true emergency, the more people we can have certified is for the better.”
The organization currently offers about two classes per semester, led by four certified student instructors. While they hope to expand, the cost of certifying additional instructors, $200 per person, remains a challenge.
“If you were in a situation where you actually have to perform CPR, it’s stressful and it’s definitely not for everyone,” Yobst said. “You don’t want someone that does not feel comfortable doing it.”
More than 350,000 people in the United States experience an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest each year, with only about 10 percent surviving. Immediate cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) can triple the likelihood of survival, but that chance declines by 10 percent for every minute that passes without intervention.
“In Tennessee, we’re fighting an even bigger uphill battle because it’s one of the leading states in cardiovascular death,” said former EM/ERGE President Emma Hynson. “We want to even out that ratio so that there’s always someone that can help to keep our community safer.”
EM/ERGE remains a resource for students beyond the medical field and interested in affordable training.
“Understanding how important CPR is in the real world and a hospital setting is what drove us to want to bring it to the community and to all students who maybe aren’t interested in medicine but want a life-saving skill that could help them in the future,” Yobst said.
For more information on upcoming trainings, email emerge@etsu.edu.
