North East Ambulance Service is supporting Restart a Heart Day, launched to raise awareness of the importance of learning CPR.
North East Ambulance Service (NEAS) is supporting Restart a Heart Day, a global initiative launched to raise awareness of the importance of learning CPR to help someone who has suffered a cardiac arrest. Restart a Heart Day takes place on 16 October each year, and NEAS run events throughout the month. The campaign aims to increase public awareness of cardiac arrests and increase the number of people trained in lifesaving CPR. This week NEAS will be delivering events, training 160 people in schools and colleges in Stockton, Redcar, and Billingham. In this year alone, NEAS has trained 2,250 adults and children in lifesaving skills. Alex Mason, community development officer at the Trust, said: “Anyone can be affected by a sudden cardiac arrest at any time. It’s important to quickly call 999, perform CPR and use a defibrillator. The earlier we act when someone is having a cardiac arrest, the better a person’s chance of surviving. “For an ambulance crew attending a cardiac arrest, knowing there’s someone there who is able to support the patient while the crew are travelling is a great reassurance. It’s heartening for them to know the community are doing their bit in the chain of survival. We have invested in the community offering partial funding in some areas to increase the number of public access defibrillators as well as providing training so that we can help increase the chance of people surviving.” Earlier this year, NEAS joined the British Heart Foundation’s The Circuit, a national database of defibrillators. This means health advisors and dispatchers dealing with emergency 999 and urgent 111 calls have access to over 60,000 defibrillators UK wide. Being part of The Circuit means that when calls are taken by NEAS from different parts of the country the details of the nearest defibrillator are visible and so we can ask someone on the scene of an incident to retrieve it to help save a person’s life. Over 30,000 people suffer a cardiac arrest out of hospital in the UK every year, with less than one in 10 people surviving. The number of cardiac arrests is around 2,100 for the North East, with just one person in 16 surviving. Millions of people in the UK won’t have had the opportunity to learn this key lifesaving skill – putting lives at risk. Bystander CPR increases survival by two to three times, however it is only delivered in one in five incidents. If we achieved the same survival rates as countries like Norway (25%) – an additional 100 lives could be saved every year. If you’d like to find out more about purchasing a defibrillator or where you can find your nearest community one, click here. If you have a defibrillator you would like to register onto The Circuit, go to The Circuit website. For guidance on CPR techniques, you can watch this video: https:// vimeo.com/726956554
Contact Information North East Ambulance Service Public Relations public.relations@neas.nhs.uk
North East Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust (NEAS) covers 3,200 square miles across the North East region. It employs more than 2,900 staff and serves a population of 2.7 million people by handling all NHS 111 and 999 calls for the region, operating patient transport and ambulance response services, delivering training for communities and commercial audiences and providing medical support cover at events. NEAS has 55 ambulance stations and covers 3,230 square miles. It has three emergency operation centres based in Newcastle, Hebburn and Wynyard. It operates 175 double crewed vehicles and 220 patient transport vehicles as well as 45 rapid response cars, a fleet of support vehicles including driver training and specialist vehicles for the Hazardous Area Response Team. In 2021/22, the service answered more than 1.15m emergency 999 and NHS 111 calls, with more than 270,000 patients taken to hospital, more than 48,000 patients treated and discharged over the phone and more than 115,000 patients treated and discharged at home. It responded to more than 22,000 C1 serious and life-threatening incidents in 7 minutes.