Reducing Barriers to Bystander Intervention: Piloting a Wintersession Program

Occurring during the last week of winter recess, X University’s Wintersession initiative offers enrichment programming. X-EMS saw Wintersession as an unused opportunity to expand its outreach, and in response, created a series of Wintersession workshops this year for students. Through this program, students earned AHA CPR Heartsaver/First Aid and Stop the Bleed certifications through lectures conducted with PowerPoint presentations and skills practice with mannikans or with partners and instructors. Registration for the Wintersession was capped at 15 students, and 14 registered and confirmed their attendance. The students came from various backgrounds, studying topics ranging from government and gender studies to computer science to biology. At least 40% of participants had no prior experience to the skills taught in X-EMS’s Wintersession. X-EMS used a Likert scale to solicit student feedback, with 1 representing “poor” and 5 “excellent”. Participants rated the overall program a 4.2. Based on participant responses suggesting that hands-on practice was the best way to learn, we plan to include additional skills training in future workshops. This Wintersession represents a new avenue for X-EMS to promote collegiate EMS as well as educate members of the community on important, life-saving skills to reduce the barrier to bystander intervention.