Red Cross Blogs

Five-minute lifesavers at the airport

By Alix Miller
October 6, 2010 at 2:16 pm

Going to the airport is – let’s face it – a stressful affair. There’s the lugging of heavy suitcases, the queues, the decanting of toiletries into tiny plastic bags, the constant checking to see if you have passport, ticket etc. Then, if you’re lucky,  you have a few frenzied minutes of last-minute shopping thrown in for good measure. Relaxing, it ain’t.

However, I was delighted to discover that going to the airport can be a learning experience too (and I’m not talking about mastering the art of shoehorning all your bits and pieces for a week’s holiday into a tiny carry-on case).

Passengers travelling through Heathrow now have the chance to learn life-saving skills in five minutes from London Ambulance medics. The initiative was launched last week at Terminal 5, in association with Medtronic (who are supplying the equipment) and BAA.

Yes, it’s amazing that you can now check in, pick up some suntan cream and learn what to do if you see someone suffering a cardiac arrest…all before even boarding your flight. Ambulance staff are training members of the public in CPR using mannequinns, as well as showing people how to use a defibrillator.

Studies show that immediate CPR and defibrillation are critical to survival, and the chances of successful defibrillation decline at a rate of seven to ten per cent with each minute of delay.

But you don’t need to go to the airport to learn life-saving skills. Sign up to one of our many first aid training courses or see our first aid tips and videos.

---

Comment (0) »

---

Tags: cpr, first aid tips, first aid training

The Red Cross values comments both complimentary and critical. However, we will not tolerate the following: aggressive or personal criticism of the blogger, breach of copyright, obscene, defamatory, profane, sexually oriented, racially offensive or likewise objectionable comments.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 6th, 2010 at 2:16 pm and is filed under First aid, UK. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

---