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The
specification of danny cpr is impressive; the review claims the most realistic
resuscitation aid available, and for good reason, danny cpr is a real person, made-up to
look like a resuscitation doll.
I asked the creator to explain how he became a living cpr dummy and the reasons behind it.
I have been working as a living statue/ mannequin performer since 1990, mainly
concentrating in the safety arena. If you've ever visited a health and safety exhibition
and had a stand mannequin suddenly move and scare the living daylights out of you, then
that was probably me. Over the years I have added extra characters to my repertoire. I
have always been excited by new challenges and whenever I come across a new dummy type
character, I will spend hours perfecting the look, with the ultimate goal of being
undetectable as a person.
And so it was that after doing a first-aid course and using a resuscitation doll for the
first time, I decided that my next challenge was to be totally convincing as a cpr dummy.
It was obvious that it was going to be the make-up that would be the key here, and the
attention to detail was going to be vital if I were to succeed. I started experimented
with various make-up colours; my earlier attempts looking quite pink, until I finally
found some make-up of a convincing shade and texture. My next goal was to find a use for
my character.
In the back of my mind, I remembered an incident while I was a stand mannequin at a safety
show, a group of fire-fighters from the West Midlands fire service had walked past and
commented that I looked just like the resuscitation dummy they had
been training with. So I wrote a letter to the West Midland Training Centre with the idea
of offering myself as a training dummy.
Nick Perry, who was overseeing the Basic Life Training Course at the training centre,
responded to my letter. His idea was to use me to supplement the resuscitation dummy and
the live casualty that were currently being used in the training. |
The scenario:
Student enters room, after being told by an examiner that they will find a casualty. The
student then sees what appears to be a cpr dummy lying on the floor in the centre of the
room. At this point one of two things may happen, they follow their training and check for
breathing or they make an assumption and attempt to give emergency breaths. If the latter
happens, the examiner will stop them and ask them to assess the casualty for breathing
again. The point of the scenario is to drive home the importance of the training and not
to jump to assumptions.
After a few years experience
of being danny cpr, it has become a unique training tool, as I am to be able to give
feedback to students afterwards, who mostly have no idea that I'm not a dummy.
If you would like to use Danny CPR, he can be
contacted at: mark@mannequin-man.com
and his website: http://www.mannequin-man.com
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article in Edition 3 of focus on first aid
Transcript in
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