Murfreesboro City Schools Certified Heart Safe

Murfreesboro City Schools is the one of two districts in the region to complete the Project ADAM specifications and become a certified heart safe school district.

Project ADAM’s mission is to serve children and adolescents through education and the deployment of life saving programs that help prevent sudden cardiac arrest and sudden cardiac death in schools. Adults at work or visiting in schools will also benefit from the program. The goal is to engage the participation of all schools in Tennessee.

“We have met the requirements in both education and technology to be considered a Heart Safe School,” says Sara Walker, RN, Coordinator of Nursing for Murfreesboro City Schools. “While we always hope for the best, we want to be prepared for all emergencies.”

As a Heart Safe School students, visitors, and employees of MCS will have a better chance of surviving a cardiac arrest because of Automated External Defibrillators (AEDs). The AEDs are part of the district’s new public access defibrillation program that trains staff to recognize a cardiac emergency, perform CPR and use the device to administer a shock to the heart.

The program will allow nurses and first response staff to respond to any person who collapses and offer our students, guests and employees every chance to survive a cardiac arrest. Cardiac arrest is a condition in which abnormal heart rhythms cause the heart’s electrical impulses to suddenly become chaotic. When this happens, the heart stops abruptly, and the victim collapses and quickly loses consciousness.

School nurses lead the way to advance health and support education by ensuring that students are safe, healthy, and ready to learn. Murfreesboro City Schools has one nurse in each school to care for students and staff.

Project Adam is named in honor of Adam Lemel who collapsed and died while playing basketball in January of 1999. His death spurred the efforts to establish a program to help schools place AEDs in all locations. The program, Project ADAM, was a joint effort of friends of Adam and Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin and has been a resource for many schools across the nation. Since 2016, Tennessee requires all schools to provide annual SCA, CPR and AED awareness training and perform at least one AED/CPR practice drill.

Murfreesboro City Schools is a district of twelve schools committed to the academic and personal success of each child.