NWAS Resuscitators win UK Heart Safe Awards

The North West Ambulance Service NHS Trust (NWAS) has been awarded ‘Emergency Services Team of the Year’ at the UK Heart Safe Awards 2013

The North West Ambulance Service NHS Trust (NWAS) has been awarded ‘Emergency Services Team of the Year’ at the UK Heart Safe Awards 2013.

NWAS’s Community Resuscitation Team has won the award for the overall work they have done in the community.

Andrew Redgrave, NWAS Community Engagement Manager said: “The Team has done a brilliant job in helping communities to sustain life before the ambulance service arrives and these awards recognise this. Across the North West, the team has linked up with charities, communities and stakeholders to improve the chances of people surviving. They have been involved in teaching young and old alike how to use defibrillators and placing them in areas where cardiac arrests are most likely to occur. They have also shared good practice within diverse groups. “

The Heart Safe Award is the UK’s first nationwide awards competition to celebrate organisations and employers which invest in creating Heart Safe environments as well as the acts of individuals who have saved lives while at work or leisure.

A Heart Safe environment is one where life-saving equipment and training are provided for staff or customers so that, should a sudden cardiac arrest occur, people are fully prepared to perform resuscitation and life support immediately.

The Community Resuscitation Team has worked with The British Heart Foundation to offer Heartstart - the Emergency Life Support training course - regularly across the North West. This trains people to recognise Cardiac Arrest, perform effective Cardio Pulmonary Resuscitation (CPR), as well as deal with other immediately life threatening events such as choking and serious bleeding.

It has also taught people how to do Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (CPR), and how to use Automated External Defibrillators (AED) to treat sudden cardiac arrests – teaching people how to save lives. 95 per cent of people who have SCA die from it-most within minutes. Rapid treatment of SCA with an AED can be lifesaving. The use of an AED on a person that has suffered a sudden Cardiac arrest can increase their chance of survival by up-to 40 per cent.

The Team has also worked closely with charities to raise funds to place Public Access Defibrillators in local schools, colleges, communities and businesses which can be used by untrained people to save lives. These portable devices check heart rhythms and can send an electric shock to the heart to try to restore a normal rhythm. For every minute a defibrillator is away from a patient, their chances of survival decrease by 7-10 per cent and without a defibrillator the chances of survival are 5-6% with CPR.

Bailie Kershaw – who was awarded a CardiacSmart Life Saver Award by the Trust earlier this year and won a Pride of Britain Award in September – also won ‘Heart Safe Life Saver of the Year’ at the awards.

12 year old Ballie saved his Dad’s life earlier this year after he suffered a cardiac arrest by performing CPR with guidance from an NWAS 999 call taker. Baillie lives in Millom, Cumbria.