René Berthiaume

René Berthiaume, Prescott-Russell

Having worked with an ambulance company in the rural area of Prescott-Russell for more than twenty years, Rene Berthiaume has been eyewitness to the benefits of CPR training and the tragic results of its absence.

Berthiaume says that when he first started as an ambulance attendant 27 years ago "in the case of heart attacks, most of the time the patient was dead by the time we got there." Over time, he saw some improvement. "We saw that where CPR courses were started, saves were made."

In 1995 Dr. Justin Maloney, medical director at the Base Hospital of Ottawa-Carleton, recommended that Berthiaume, then the owner of Noel ambulance services, take the initiative to start up the ACT high school CPR program. He jumped at the opportunity.

"In a rural area it takes longer for ambulances to get there. We as a community have to find solutions," says Berthiaume.

Soon, thanks to his fluent bilingualism he had English and French school boards working together to set up CPR programs at all eight of the area's high schools.

With help from his brother Yves Berthiaume, then Vice-President of Optimist International, the schools received the money they needed for mannequins to launch the program. Berthiaume says representatives from the Optimist Club are delighted with the program, and make a point of joining ambulance staff in celebrating the graduation of every CPR class. In fact, just this year the school's CPR instructor resuscitated a teacher who suffered a cardiac arrest at the local Vankleek Hill Collegiate Institute.