By Terri Holland, Executive Director of the Utah Emergency Medical Training Council
and Business Representative on the East Central Community Council Executive Board
On Friday, February 1, 2013 the Utah Emergency Medical Training Council (UEMTC), a Utah non-profit organization dedicated to emergency medical training launched the Shockingly Simple to Restart a Heart Campaign.
On Tuesday, February 5, 2013, the UEMTC excitedly installed a new AED (Automated External Defibrillator) down the hall, above the fire extinguisher.
On Friday, February 8, 2013, a man traveling in front of our offices located in the East Central Community district at 450 South 900 East, had a heart attack and died.
He had retired last year from the Utah State Tax Commission. He was a kind, private family man with no history of heart disease. He was going home to Tooele after a dentist appointment. When his car hit a parked car, it looked to us at the UEMTC like just another fender bender. But, Tyler Budd, a CPR instructor, seeing the man slumped over and not moving, thought it was much more serious. And he was right. Within seconds, he and Meghan Cox, another CPR instructor had, with the help of bystanders, extricated the man from the car (they had to break the window) and on the ground. Soon both began CPR for a man without a pulse who was not breathing. Within seconds after that, the AED arrived on scene and once attached, it indicated the need for a shock. Having done this, they continued chest compressions and breathing until emergency medical personnel arrived on scene.
When the paramedics left with the man in the back of the ambulance headed for the Salt Regional Hospital emergency room, he had a pulse and was breathing. The man who died was now alive, and today, five days later, he is still alive and surrounded by his family. He is not laying at the funeral home surrounded by grieving family members ready to put him in the ground. He is not a statistic or a theoretical event. He is a man, with a family, and he is alive for one reason; he had a heart attack in a place where people had access to an AED and knew CPR.
The UEMTC knows CPR and AED’s save lives. And we want to train you on how to use an AED, and we want to encourage you or your business to buy an AED so that people who need it, can use it. For more information on the Shockingly Simple to ReStart a Heart Campaign or to volunteer to teach AED use, or to buy an AED, or to take a CPR class, call us at 801.562.2663 or find us on the web at www.uemtc.org. We will come out to your place and teach you to use an AED for free. It is that important.
Just ask the guy who died on Friday.
East Central Community Council, home of Porchfest Salt Lake.
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