It comes as the South East Coast Ambulance Service had a record year for saving lives from cardiac arrests.
Finn Macdiarmid reports.
Finn Macdiarmid reports.
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00:00As part of their National Heart Month scheme, South East Coast Ambulance Service reunited
00:04Chris Mills, who suffered a cardiac arrest at the end of last year, with the team who
00:08saved his life.
00:09So we were just walking to the shops from our house with Brenda and then I just suddenly
00:17collapsed and the next thing I knew I was waking up in hospital. So Brenda knew what
00:23was going on.
00:24He just went down like a ton of bricks. I was trying to get him round, feel for pulse
00:29and luckily for us there was an off-duty nurse coming back from Starbucks with her family
00:35and she just took over.
00:38Two paramedic crews were on the scene and the response time was particularly quick,
00:42but since Chris was unconscious throughout the process, he wasn't able to meet them
00:45until now, and they say it makes a big difference for the entire team.
00:50It's amazing every time. Out-of-hospital cardiac arrest is around about 9% survival
00:57rate and for us you can go months, even years, that you don't get anyone back. It's just
01:07a wonderful thing for everyone because it's effectively what we do our job for.
01:13The meet-up event comes after a report revealed that CCAM had their highest ever and national
01:17leading survival rate for out-of-hospital cardiac arrests. The service are urging people
01:22to sign up to a local life-saving course near them, as well as an app called GoodSAM that
01:27alerts trained users to nearby heart attacks. The rate is 11.5% between 2023 and 2024 and
01:34represents 307 lives saved, but some say there's still more work to be done.
01:39We found for years that survival from out-of-hospital cardiac arrest is lower than it should be
01:44and in many cases that's because those early interventions, that early CPR, early defibrillation
01:50isn't happening as quickly as it needs to.
01:53So after Sam showed me the basics, I had a go myself.
01:57So you found someone who may be going under a cardiac arrest, you've tried to wake them,
02:01you've now called 999 and you've got your operator there telling you what to do and
02:05walking you through the process. The next step is to actually administer CPR. You want
02:09to do it about to the tune of staying alive or baby shark, locking your hands like this
02:13and placing them just in the centre and then just keeping that same beat.
02:20The ambulance team say that learning the skills to keep someone's heart pumping long enough
02:24for them to arrive and the early response to cardiac arrest can be the difference between
02:28a life saved and a life lost. And for them, this means they can have the chance to meet
02:32someone who they saved with their own hands.
02:34Finn McDermid for KMTV in Gillingham.