Cork First Aid Supplies

This comprehensive Heartsaver AED Course is designed to teach the Irish Heart Foundation and American Heart Association Heartsaver AED Defibrillation for the lay rescuer and First Responders.

The Heartsaver AED Course teaches you the basic techniques of cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), how to use an Automated External Defibrillator (AED) and the relief of choking for adults, children and infants. An AED is a computerised defibrillator which analyses the heart rhythm of a person in cardiac arrest and uses voice prompts to advise you if a shock is needed. The AED is an important link in the chain of survival and this course teaches you how to use them effectively.

The Heartsaver AED Course takes approximately 4 hours to complete and you will receive an Irish Heart Foundation / American Heart Association course completion card upon successfully completing the course

The course is multimedia based with practical instruction from qualified Irish Heart Foundation Instructors. All participants receive a comprehensive instruction pack of a CD with includes video clips of CPR and the use of an AED, this can be used for review at anytime

Time to defibrillation is the most critical factor in survival of sudden cardiac arrest (SCA). If an AED is "on-site" within two minutes there is an 80% chance that the victim will survive. This is one of the reasons that survival rates improve in areas with active AED programmes. Remember, every minute that passes before defibrillation the survival rate reduces by 7-10 percent. Currently in Ireland the survivability rate for out of hospital cardiac arrest is 1%.

Up to recently in Ireland the AED was only used by Healthcare Professionals, but we now see "Public Access Defibrillation" programmes. For first response professionals like the fire and ambulance servers the AED is standard equipment. For schools, offices, shopping centres, factories, gyms, hotels and any public place, it's as vital as the fire extinguisher.