Tuesday 8th April 2014 – 8.55am – Chris Kowalik.
There are calls for schools in Shropshire to put CPR and defibrillation on their curricula.
In January 2013, Heartstart Shropshire CFR, supported by West Midlands Ambulance Service and the British Heart Foundation went on a mission to teach basic lifesaving skills to as many people in the county as possible.
The group is now focussing on schools, a number of which have taken-up the offer of free lessons on what to do when someone suffers a cardiac arrest.
One of them is The Corbet School in Baschurch whose year eight to eleven pupils are currently being taught by Heartstart volunteers.
Taking the lessons to year eleven pupils on Friday 4th April was Andy Davies, the co-ordinator of Heartstart Shropshire CFR. He said: “In schools, we have a captive audience. As soon as they leave school and go into the big wide world you can never get them all together again. By being at the schools, by teaching them and hopefully coming in, starting them off and taking them right the way through, an hour a year, we have a generation out there that can go out and do that emergency life support.
“An hour a year – if you can do an hour a year, that’s five hours throughout the school year, general updates and a little bit of refresher training and we’ve got a generation that are fully trained as soon as they leave school.”
Jeanette Reaney PHSE coordinator at The Corbet School added: “The feedback has been excellent. The kids have thoroughly enjoyed doing it, they feel they have achieved something and the fact that the vast majority of staff now are first aid trained, we can have a discussion with children about what they have done, so you know it has actually sunk in. I think other schools should take it on board. I think it should be a standard part of the curriculum. It fits in very well into the PHSE and citizenship curricula. To have the physical ‘hands-on’ is vital.”
To arrange a lesson, please contact Andy Davies on 07891 187 530 or email andygdfire@aol.com
Pictured: back row l-r: Andy Davies, Ethan Green, Tim Stokes (CFR and Heartstart trainer). Front: Sinead Smallcombe.
Please credit “West Midlands Ambulance Service” if using any of the above pictures.
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