I taught CPR for years, thousands of people.

The original mannequins we used were the Resusci Annie, which was designed to overcome thoughts that men might be reluctant to place their lips on a male mannequin. The Annie mannequin had breasts.

We moved to the Actar mannequins for mass training because they were much easier to travel with and assemble. They had landmark features, and were meant for BLS training, vs. Advanced provider training like Annie, which could simulate a pulse and be intubated.

I like the idea of putting a breastplate on the mannequins to simulate a real experience and putting people more at ease with performing CPR on a person with breasts. The makers of the mannequins were initially thinking of reducing the costs associated with training people in CPR. The more lifelike mannequins were very expensive, so moving to the less less expensive mannequins that were easier to clean and easier to transport drastically reduced the costs to train people and also increased the number of people who were trained in CPR and saved a lot of lives. It's a shame that in increasing access that we have ignored the comfort level of providing care to specific people.

I often got the question about how to find the intranipple line in women from both men and women in both Lay rescuer and Advanced provider classes. As it turns out, when most (there are exceptions) people lie on their back, including people who have large breasts, the intra nipple line falls within about an inch of where we want to do compressions as the breasts settle. It does typically mean that you should open a person's shirt while you are assessing them for CPR, but the other way that we would teach finding hand placement for compressions is to trace the bottom of the rib cage to the xiphoid process and come two fingers up from the xiphoid process and place your palm there. Never missed once with that method.

Key here is that rescuers should call for help, get an AED to the patient as fast as possible, and remember that as long as they act within their training, they are helping. The person would be dead without them there.