Quote:
Originally Posted by Kenswing
A little understanding of the program can go a long way. There’s no calling the guy with the combo to the AED. As soon as someone calls 911 and reports a cardiac arrest, the AED responders are sent an alert simultaneously to the fire department being toned out.
Our village is broken into zones. When the call goes out the trained responders in the zone where the incident is gets a text alert along with an automated phone message. In most cases the two adjacent zones to the incident will also be activated just to ensure an adequate number of people respond.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jayteadunn
I wanted to add some info to this. I've been in the fire service and ems since the mid 80's.
Most importantly the chance of survival diminishes by 10% for every minute it takes to get an AED physically on the patient. The fire dept has a goal of a firehouse within 2.5 miles of a home. With the 911 call, getting on the engine, and driving to the call its 5 minutes. 50% chance. The neighborhood groups add 20% to 30% to the chance of survival.
Absolutely early CPR is the key BUT imagine you rearranged your spark plug wires on your car in the wrong order. You can try to start that car all day and it will never run. A heart rhythm is like those spark plug wires. You can do CPR until the cows come home BUT if the heart is in the wrong rhythm the cpr isn't going to help. Shock the heart into the right rhythm and you are ready to have cpr start than engine.
I read a lot in this thread about the fire dept arriving first. The Villages Fire Rescue is BUSY. They do tons of medical calls every day. You don't need to believe me. Download the pulsepoint app to your phone. Choose sumter county and watch the calls. The unit numbers for the vehicles are shown for each call. Look how many do call after call. While the villlages wants firehouses every 2.5 miles to each home realize your unit can easily be on another call and now your waiting for the one 5 miles or 7.5 miles away. It is what it is. Look at the app and see how busy they are. You will be surprised.
Someone said "AED's run on batteries and in some cases are $2,000" I think they meant the brand new AED is $2,000. The unit the FD recommends now is a little under $2,000 which includes the battery which often is good for several years.
Someone said "what prevents these from being stolen?" many have padlocks and are keyed the same for the AED program and the rescuers are issued padlock keys.
Someone said "Actually the fire department has a program that a box holding a key can be placed on your home to gain entry" this is called a knox box and the villages fire rescue has keys which open the knox box. All of the knox boxes in the village are keyed alike so they can open it in an emergency and pull out your home key. I installed one, it was easy. With sales tax and shipping it was under $230. The vendor is VSC Fire & Security in Orlando 407-679-3332. You want the residential one. here is a short video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1N-xXB2510o |
Well this thread has seemingly turned the corner, into substantive and important information.
Thank you both for bringing some value to the conversation.