“The Actar 911 doll will have a worldwide impact on the teaching of cardio-pulmonary resuscitation, or CPR” said John Blaicher, who is the marketing director at the Royal Life Saving Society of Canada (James, 1990, page 1). The marketing director was attending a CPR rally held at the Ontario Science Centre, where the doll passed with flying colors when it went through a process that provided an opportunity for 300 people to practice the CPR technique simultaneously. The technique involved in CPR consist in the pressing of one’s palms on a victim’s chest in an attempt to bring back a heartbeat after it has stopped. At the same time the pressing of the palms is done, mouth-to-mouth resuscitation is done to get the victim breathing again.
The dummy was invented by Dianne Croteau and Richard Brault to give people hands-on experience of what to do when someone is having a heart attack or other respiratory ailments. Because the Toronto couple is used to designing safety and rescue equipment, such as stretchers, they designed the dummy in response to a request from a group of Canadian first-aid establishments that were seeking a cheap dummy for CPR instructors for their students. Until the Actar 911 came about, the major problem with cardio-pulmonary resuscitation (CPR) training had been obtaining a large enough number of dummies for classes for students to use. Other dummies on the market that have the more advanced electronic insides can cost up to $2,000 a piece. Croteau’s and Brault’s dummy sells for about $60 and is considered to be “simplicity itself” (The Toronto Star, 1991, page 1).
Local CPR instructors raved about the dummy when the team from Sudio Innova demonstrated the invention recently at the Canadian Red Cross national office as part of a CPR Awareness Month. “It’s so cost-efficient. It’s going to be just wonderful,” said Brenda Pichette, who is the national coordinator of first-aid services for the Red Cross. Between 50,000 and 60,000 Canadians die each year from heart attacks. Pichette says that this sad number can be dramatically decreased by being able to train more people because of the new dummy. She guesses it should take an hour off of a standard four-hour CPR course. “This should make it possible for us to achieve our goal of having one in five Canadians learn CPR,” said Richard Lauzon, the senior director of education for the Heart and Stroke Foundation (The Toronto Star, 1991, page 1).
At the University Hospital in the Netherlands, a group of medical personnel (Noordergraaf, Van Gelder, Van Kesteren, Diets, and Savelkoul) conducted a study to compare the quality of training between the Actar 911 and a sophisticated mannequin (Laerdal Recording Resusci Anne). The experiment concluded that no major differences were found in the quality between the two (p=0.18) and that the trainees actually preferred being able to use the individual mannequins. The team’s analysis also revealed that the result in the trainees learning incorrect skills nor any kind of significant improvements were to be found between the use of both dummies. In order to try and seek any differences they would have into deeper studies (PubMed, 1997, page 1).
Michael Hocker 
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