Life Support Training

Training the Medical Community to Help Save Lives

To help ensure that our patients receive care under the safest conditions, Operation Smile partnered with the American Heart Association (AHA) to establish international training programs for developing nations that will provide critical life-saving skills to in-country medical professionals. The program is intended to develop training networks and deliver certification in Pediatric Advanced Life Support (PALS), Advanced Cardiac Life Support (ACLS) and Basic Life Support (BLS).

Operation Smile has trained volunteers to recognize and treat emergencies, including cardiac arrest and respiratory failure, and has also provided trauma and Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) training for more than 1,000 in-country medical professionals worldwide.

As a result of our long-standing partnership with AHA, our foundations are expanding their own training networks and offering this valuable certification to many others in their communities. Operation Smile was the first organization recognized as a global and mobile International Training Organization (ITO) of the American Heart Association.

Through this partnership, and the ripple effect it has created, more than 14,092 volunteers have been trained and certified in the American Heart Association's life support throughout the course of the program. Plus, in a recent survey of previous life support participants, more than 85% of respondents said they had saved a life with their newfound knowledge.

Operation Smile is currently expanding its life support training to include Helping Babies Breathe (HBB), a course in neonatal resuscitation developed by the American Academy of Pediatrics. To date, HBB training has been held for community midwives in Morocco and for pediatric nurses in Namibia. Operation Smile is developing a team of HBB master trainers for further implementation of the program.