A dispatcher named Colin Terry recalls one sunny day when he received a call. He knew in the tone of the voice that there was an emergency situation.
Wendy Swain who is an Elementary School teacher took her students out to take a recess break. The children were all playing when suddenly one of students became unconscious and fell to the ground. She rushed immediately to the student who was looking very dead. The student, whose name and school were not revealed for private reasons, had a sudden cardiac arrest.
Timely intervention
Swain immediately provided CPR on the student with instructions from the 911 dispatcher named Colin Terry. He provided steps on how to provide proper CPR on the student. The teacher gave at least 600 chest compressions on the student. Terry told Swain to send a person to look for a defibrillator. The defibrillator never arrived. Finally the paramedics arrived and continued with the CPR and immediately brought the student to the hospital for further treatment. The Doctors are wondering why the student had gone into cardiac arrest and made a full recovery.
The parents of the student were grateful for the efforts of Swain and Terry for saving the life of their son. Swain believes that despite the positive result, she could have helped the student earlier if the school installed defibrillator in the area. A defibrillator is an electronic device that diagnoses dangerous conditions such as cardiac arrhythmias. It sends electric shock through the chest wall and return abnormal beating to normal. According to Swain if the defibrillator was sent within three to four minutes, the student would have been revived in half the time. Every seconds counts after a cardiac arrest.
According
to Swain, there is a need of an AED in every school to help emergencies that
needs to use these devices. School districts in British Columbia have
defibrillators in all their schools. Some areas in Canada that includes
Coquitlam, West Vancouver and
Sunshine are still in process of installing the defibrillators in their
schools. But some schools do not have an AED for public use unless the victim
has a medical condition and a doctor will ask for the device.
According to the head of cardiac surgery at Children’s Hospital, an AED is the most important tools in saving a person in cardiac arrest and it can also be used by people with no training. With the absence of an AED, a person in cardiac arrest can die or if they survive will have a possibility of brain damage.
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LEARN MORE
Learn how to help by enrolling in a first aid and CPR training and for more information, check out these sources: