CPR: Analysis of \"Sudden Death

¶ … CPR: Analysis of "Sudden Death and the Myth of CPR" by Stefan Timmermans

Although it has become the norm of most medical institutions when dealing with sudden death, out-of-hospital CPR or cardiopulmonary resuscitation is statistically-proven to be an ineffective form of intervention to prevent sudden deaths. In Stefan Timmermans' "Sudden death and the myth of CPR," he explores the nature of CPR as it is experienced by hospital personnel, wherein a different perspective in practicing the said life-saving procedure can be generated. The author's discussion and analysis of CPR critically assesses how CPR, despite its ineffectiveness in saving lives, has perpetuated and dominated the medical field, especially in this period of advanced medical technology.

The analysis evidently subscribes to the conflict perspective, wherein a critical analysis demonstrates the reinforcement of CPR in order to alleviate worries and apprehensions of the patient's family and relatives. Moreover, the analysis also shows that preoccupation on preventing sudden deaths through CPR results to the gradually decreasing value of community-shared (or family-shared) tradition of mourning the dead and grievance. These are the important points that reflect contemporary society today, wherein fear of death is perpetuated and death in itself becomes a technical concept that must be dealt with through the medical staff or hospital personnel -- that is, death an impersonal view of death.

Timmermans' main points are expressed effectively all throughout the book. In discussing the myth of CPR, he criticizes the mass media in bringing into the minds of their audience an inaccurate perception of what CPR is. His ethnographic research for more than one year of observing medical procedures conducted at the event of sudden death in hospitals show that "...if the purpose and expectation of CPR is to save human lives from sudden death, resuscitative interventions are largely failures...Belief in the resuscitation has the value of a revered cultural myth perpetuated by "real-life" television shows and organizations promoting CPR. The techniques spin a tale of heroism, medical magic to overcome the adversity of death..." (5).

Indeed, the author intends his readers to understand that what results from the belief of the myth of CPR is the continuing norm of tolerating people's belief that CPR can save lives and the last hours of the patient on earth are spent with the hospital staff rather than his/her family and/or relatives. What happens is that death is "celebrated" impersonally. The process of commemorating death in a meaningful manner is replaced by the hope that CPR and other medical procedures can prevent sudden deaths. As explicated in "Sudden death," CPR is "an example of an excessively technology-driven medicine...advanced medical technology has corrupted the dying experience, making it somehow less 'natural'" (7). Apart from the absence of the meaningful celebration of death, the pressure to rely on the 'power' of CPR to revive a patient to life develops to the hospital culture that death must be spent on subjecting the patient to medical procedures and tests despite the fact that the staff or personnel cannot do anything more to save the patient's life. Thus, there is pressure on the part of the hospital staff, which leads them to further perpetuate the myth of CPR simply because the patient's family or loved-ones believed in its potential to save lives. These accounts of hospital life and occurrence of deaths despite the use of CPR reinforce the critical stance that Timmerman assumes at the beginning of his book, and is argued thoroughly all throughout. In effect, "Sudden death" provides an insightful look at how specific medical procedures that are otherwise ineffective, like the CPR, often result to reinforcement of people's beliefs in its capacity to save lives and most importantly, the growing fear of death in contemporary society.