By EMS1 Staff
NEW YORK — A universal attachment for CPR dummies seeks to better train civilians and bring awareness to gender disparities in bystander intervention.
The Womanikin, a vest with silicon breasts that fits traditional CPR manikins, was created by New York City-based ad agency Joan Creative in collaboration with advocacy organization The United State of Women, according to NPR.
The attachment was unveiled in conjunction with a campaign to bring awareness to gender disparities in the performance of CPR by bystanders.
“Women are 27% less likely than men to receive CPR from bystanders in public,” the Womanikin website states. “Our goal is to bridge the gap in CPR training by normalizing a woman’s figure.”
Wilderness Medical Associates EMT Alice Henshaw has been using the attachment in the CPR courses she teaches and said that feedback has been “overwhelmingly positive.”
She said that when some male students felt awkward using the dummy with breasts, she told them to imagine that the manikin represented a woman who was important to them who “didn’t get CPR because somebody was embarrassed.”
The Womanikin creators are testing the prototype with instructors to receive feedback before seeking to partner with retailers to make the attachment more widely available.
A pattern to create one’s own Womanikin attachment is also available as an open-source download on the Womanikin website.