The original painting is, as @beschizza noted, perfectly competent while the colour version at the top of the page has a naivete reminiscent of the work of Tom of Finland.
I find it amusing that the (I’m assuming aggressively hetero) Virginia PD don’t seemed to have noticed that there might be a (I’m assuming unintentional) gay subtext to that painting.
For cardiac arrest, yes. But if the patient has a pulse and is not breathing, you go to rescue breathing. That’s what happened the one time I got to use my CPR training; the patient had advanced Parkinson’s and spontaneously stopped breathing.
Still, you always start by putting the patient flat on a hard surface, if for no other reason than you might have to switch to chest compressions if the pulse stops.
I’m sure the training varies by region, but my last certification involved no breathing at all. Just lay them on a hard surface, tilt the head back to clear the airway, and begin compressions. If there’s a pulse, we were taught to wait for the paramedics.
I am something of an authority on CPR in children, and this is not. No way you could get enough of a seal to deliver rescue breaths in that position. I understand the intention, but the artist did not research their subject matter adequately at all. Creepy and disturbing rather than inspiring.
Minor correction: mouth to mouth is not recommended or taught in adult CPR due to folks declining to do anything because they were afraid/repulsed by the mouth contact, by the infectious risk (or because the victim frequently will vomit in your mouth.) Pumping blue blood is better than pumping no blood, at least for a while. But this is largely because adult arrests are typically cardiac in origin. Pediatric arrests are almost always respiratory in nature, so rescue breaths in kids are still taught, and needed.
Forgive me, I should have been more specific. For layperson certification like we were given, we were told not to do anything with children at all. That’s specialized, so just wait for the professionals.
That makes me hurt. A child not breathing (exception for cold water drowning) has less reserve than an adult, and will begin having irreversible loss of neurons in 2-4 minutes. EMS rarely has that rapid a response time. It is trickier to do rescue breathing on kids, and the smaller they are, the trickier it gets. But it’s not terribly difficult to learn the bare bones basics. I have coded way, way too many kids, and dealt with the aftermath of “we were afraid to hurt him, so we did nothing.” Not very often will there be a me handy. Learn the basics and save a life.
