03/18/2026
A message from our founder, Glenn:
Why do bystanders fail to act?
I believe it’s rarely a single reason—it’s usually a combination of uncertainty, fear of doing harm, and performance anxiety,
In Canada, all provinces have some form of Good Samaritan legislation, so legal risk is not the real barrier. From a training perspective, we’ve seen that Hands‑Only CPR has been one of the most effective ways to lower the activation threshold for bystanders and increase willingness to act on a stranger.
I was never a believer in the idea that any CPR is better than no CPR at all—I’m not suggesting that standards don’t matter. we need to create learning environments and guidelines that reflect realistic expectations for bystanders in the real world.
I recall learning—and later teaching—CPR in the 1980s, when we emphasized high‑performance CPR using manikins with red/green lights and objective depth and rate feedback. What we ended up with was a very small group of people who could perform CPR exceptionally well. What we actually needed then—and still need now—is a much larger group of people willing and able to perform CPR reasonably well when it matters.
Perfection is not the goal in the first minutes of cardiac arrest—action is. Performance anxiety remains a significant barrier to bystander intervention, and our education models should continue to prioritize confidence, simplicity, and permission to act, without abandoning meaningful standards.
— Glenn
