This evening 10 of us gathered at the lovely warm Manor Hospital to brush up on our basic life saving skills.

A few of us have attended this course before but it is always good to have a refresher or learn new skills. You never know when you might need them.

Led by the wonderful Elaine and Nikki we learnt how to tell the difference between a heart attack and a cardiac arrest, how to administer CPR and rescue breaths and how to use a defibrillator.

A few takeaways:

• Of you find a collapsed person who is breathing normally put them in the recovery position (on their left side is best) and call 999.
• If there is no sign of breathing thats when rescue breaths and CPR should be used.
• Drs ABC should be followed (see below)
• If the person has been drowning or choking start with 5 good rescue breaths to get oxygen back into the body.
• A good CPR protocol is 30 compressions to 2 rescue breaths and try to minimise time off the chest.

D - check for danger R - is the person responsive to voice or stimulus S - shout for help (check for bleeding) A - check the airway B - do rescue breaths C - Compressions

Apps: what3words - you can give the exact location to the ambulance AED map - an app for searching defib locations.

Websites:

Defib finder The Circuit

Thank you everyone for coming. I hope that we never need to use the skills that we've learnt today but we have them, just in case.