ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Advanced cardiac life support

Advanced cardiac life support (ACLS) is a type of special training that doctors, nurses, and other healthcare professionals get to help people who have very serious heart problems. Imagine your heart like a pump that helps push blood around your body, and if your heart has a problem, then your body might not get the blood it needs to work properly. So, ACLS helps people whose hearts are not pumping well, or have stopped pumping altogether.

During ACLS training, healthcare professionals learn how to use special tools, like defibrillators, to give the heart a shock if it stops beating. They also learn how to give medicines to help the heart beat more strongly or start beating again. Additionally, they are trained to recognize and treat other complications that might happen when someone has a serious heart problem, such as breathing difficulties or low blood pressure.

In real life, an ACLS team works together to quickly assess a patient’s condition and provide the necessary treatments that can help the patient recover and survive. The goal of ACLS is to save lives of people who are experiencing cardiac emergencies, like heart attacks or cardiac arrest, as quickly and efficiently as possible.