You get your CPR certification as part of your education when you go to school to be a Medical Assistant. When you are finished with school and graduate, then you have to take the national CMA (certified medical assistant) or RMA (registered medical assistant) exam. Then you can go to work for a doctor. After that, the area of the country where you live, the specialty of the doctor you work for and your ability is going to account for how much you get paid, anywhere from $6 per hour to $10 as a starting pay.

Alone With a Heart Attack

You're at home alone, and you suddenly feel a severe pain in the chest.  It is now radiating up all the way to your jaw area, and it's going outwards to your left arm.  Almost certainly you're having a serious heart attack.

You've only got about 10 seconds left.  Your heart is stopping, and you'll be losing consciousness unless you do something right now! 

Start coughing repeatedly and very vigorously. A deep breath should be taken before each cough. The cough must be deep and prolonged, as when producing sputum from deep inside the chest. And a cough must be repeated about every 1-2 seconds without let up until help arrives, or until the heart is felt to be beating normally again.  Cough even to pain!

It's now immediate decision time!  How can you get the fastest medical help or CPR?

    1.  Call 911 while coughing.
    2.  Scream for help IF someone who knows CPR is near enough to hear you.

You MUST get CPR immediately or you may die. 

The deep breaths get oxygen into the lungs and the coughing movements squeeze the heart and keep the blood circulating.

There's still another benefit of this deep breath/cough routine.  The squeezing pressure on the heart may even help it regain normal rhythm.  In this way, heart attack victims can often get to a hospital and live a lot longer.

One case was reported where the victim was driving about 5 minutes from a hospital, and managed to stay alive while driving this distance by simply using this deep breath/cough routine. 

Five minutes or even longer is a huge improvement on 10-30 seconds of heart stoppage.  You may be able to save your own life.

Take a CPR course and you might be the person nearby that saves another's life.  Saving another persons life!  Now, that's a real ego trip that makes anyone feel good.    
   
CPR is pretty simple to learn, and almost everyone can learn how to do it effectively and safely.