Peru hospital receives Lighthouse Award for improving cardiac arrest survival

Illinois Valley Community Hospital in Peru, now St. Margaret’s Health-Peru, has been designated as an RQI Lighthouse Organization for demonstrating resuscitation best practices using the RQI program.

IVCH was the first hospital in Illinois to use the RQI system to train nurses and other clinical providers in cardiopulmonary resuscitation, hospital officials said. The hospital implemented the system – which is endorsed by the American Heart Association – four years ago.

“With RQI, our staff practices hands-on CPR skills with a manikin every three months through a system that provides live feedback,” nurse educator Ashley Freitag said in a news release. “This allows staff to provide the best quality CPR in an emergent situation. IVCH is honored to be at the leading edge in CPR certification while bringing the most up-to-date CPR training to our providers and staff.”

Officials from IVCH said the RQI training techniques have helped the hospital’s clinical staff achieve mastery of high-quality CPR skills and competence, which has improved their outcome.

The RQI Lighthouse Organizations align with the RQI mission to eliminate preventable death from sudden cardiac arrest.