Table 3.

Cultural barriers to performing bystander CPR.

Code	Illustrative Quote
Age	Because people might look at you different, because  it’s like an older person, helping a younger person.  Like maybe touching them wrong, or stuff like that.
Sex	If a guy sees a girl collapse, that like, he doesn’t want  to interact with her. There’s, like I don’t know, space  issues, like, with female and male.
Immigration  status	I think people don’t react because of fear,  communication. They don’t want to be  involved…because they have a criminal history, or  because of immigration issues.
Language	There needs to be 2-way communication, not just  simple instructions [with the dispatcher]. Like, if the  person receiving CPR begins to go into convulsions,  or if they have a lot of bleeding also at the same  time. I mean, there could be a lot of complications.
Racism	They don’t want to get involved and be known as  someone who is helping someone else’s gang, or  someone else’s culture, or someone else’s color or  creed because, you know, racism exists and hate  exists and that probably is never going to go away.
Stranger	If it’s a close person…but if it’s a stranger you would  think twice. I mean, I’m not going to give mouth-to-mouth  respiration to a person I’ve never seen before  in my life.
Touching another  person	And then also, the hesitancy that there is, and I don’t  know if it’s limited to Hispanic culture or not, but the  hesitancy to touch another person, especially in the  chest, and if it’s a woman, oh my goodness.… Uh,  there is great hesitations on the older people’s part.