South Central Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust (SCAS) is supporting calls from the British Heart Foundation (BHF) for all local schools with a defibrillator to make sure that it is registered on The Circuit.
The Circuit is the national defibrillator network used by all 14 ambulance services across the UK. It enables ambulance services to locate the nearest defibrillator when a 999 is called in response to a cardiac arrest.
But unless the defibrillator is registered on The Circuit, there could be a defibrillator very close to a patient that could help save their life that the ambulance service doesn’t know about.
Recent research suggests that just over a third of out-of-hospital cardiac arrests happen within 300 metres of a school.
David Hamer, paramedic and operations manager at SCAS, said:
“We currently have over 1,100 schools in our region with a registered defibrillator on The Circuit. This means that if someone suffers a cardiac arrest near those schools, our emergency call takers can advise someone to go and get the defibrillator.
“For every minute that passes without a patient receiving CPR or a shock from a defibrillator, their chances of survival reduce by 10%. So every second matters, and if our control room team know there is a defibrillator nearby, it really could make the difference between life and death.”
This week, the BHF is contacting all schools in the South Central region to urge them to check if their defibrillator is registered on The Circuit.
Schools can register their defibrillator online for free in less than five minutes.
Just visit bhf.org.uk/thecircuit/schools to get started.
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