Did you know the Bainbridge Island Rotary has now placed 51 AEDs all over Bainbridge? In the event of an islander or visitor experiencing sudden cardiac arrest, these easy to use, safe devices can save a life. Intervention must take place with CPR and AED shock in less than 10 minutes. See where they are by downloading the smart phone app “PULSE POINT”.
Below is the story from earlier in 2019 on how this all got started. As you can see the number of AED's has increased dramatically.
AED program gets its start on death’s doorstep: Rotary begins fundraising effort for more lifesaving defibrillators
By Brian Kelly, Bainbridge Island Review
Tuesday, March 12, 2019
Jack Sutherland couldn’t breath.
He woke up in a panic.
And when he tried to raise his hands to his face, he discovered they were strapped down.
Sutherland then opened his eyes and saw his wife Carole, and son, Chris. It was just after 6:30 p.m. Monday, March 9, 2015. He was in a hospital bed at Harborview Medical Center, and had just come out of the emergency room after being treated for a cardiac arrest.
The last thing Sutherland remembered was walking to his chair, microphone in hand, at the lunchtime meeting for the Rotary Club of Bainbridge Island Rotary at St. Barnabas Episcopal Church.
Sutherland had been walking around the room minutes before, sharing the microphone with people who had good-news announcements for the “Happy Bucks” part of the program.
Bainbridge Island Fire Chief Hank Teran, a Rotary member, was sitting on the other side of the room.
“All of a sudden, I hear this ‘Bang!’ And somebody yells, ‘Where’s Hank? Where’s the chief?” Teran recalled.
Sutherland was on the floor next to his chair. Teran checked his vitals, and determined Sutherland was in full cardiac arrest.
“He’s not breathing and there’s no pulse. I grab one of the Rotarians, ‘We need you to call 911 immediately,’” Teran remembered.
While Teran and another person begin CPR, others look around for an AED (automated external defibrillator), a portable device that can send an electrical shock to a person’s heart to get it beating in rhythm again. The church didn’t have one.
Thankfully, paramedics arrived quickly and Sutherland was soon on a gurney, in an aid car, and then on a medical airlift flight to Seattle.
More than six hours later, just out of the emergency room, Sutherland came to. He couldn’t breath because of the tubes in his mouth.
“First instinct was, I couldn’t believe I was suffocating,” he recalled. Then Sutherland found he was lashed down to the bed.
“Well, this is panic time. I was thinking, what in the world has happened to me?”
Sutherland soon discovered what had happened when everything went black at the Rotary meeting.
“They call it sudden cardiac arrest for a reason. It’s just bang! Your heart stops,” he said.
The incident turned Sutherland into an expert of sorts; he can quickly cite the number of cardiac arrests every year in the U.S. (350,000) and the number of victims who require both CPR and a defibrillator to survive (70 percent).
He is now an enthusiastic advocate for AEDs, and getting them placed all across the island where they can do some good.
There wasn’t a device at Saint Barnabas.
“There is now,” the chief said.
That was just a start. Sutherland and Teran have teamed up to lead Rotary’s program to expand the number of defibrillators, or AEDs, across Bainbridge. A Rotary grant has helped put 26 in place; some with the financial assistance of local businesses such as ACE Hardware.
As of January 2019, Bainbridge has 39 of the devices scattered across the island in places where large numbers of people gather.
Now, the pair are fundraising to expand the Rotary’s AED program to install even more of the devices.
Teran credits Sutherland for being the real power behind the program.
“This is his passion; this program. He has done the heavy lifting,” Teran said.
The devices cost approximately $1,600 retail, but Sutherland has negotiated a volume discount with the manufacturer to drop the cost to $930 for AEDs for the Bainbridge program.
“He’s quite the negotiator,” Teran said.
Some of the 39 units obtained so far were placed at no-cost at some locations, such as the Bainbridge Island Historical Museum, while other recipients have split the costs with Rotary or covered the full cost.
The pair hope to eventually double the number of AEDs on the Bainbridge, with donations from islanders in the months ahead.
“The goal is to have Bainbridge Island one of the most prepared communities regarding AEDs,” Teran said.
“I’m confident were going to get close to 40 additional AEDs,” Sutherland added.
For more information on the program, or to donate, visit www.bainbridgeislandrotary.org.
Download the PULSE POINT app on your phone to see where Public Defibrillators are in your town.
The Sudden Cardiac Arrest Foundation has announced its support of mobile apps designed to engage CPR-trained individuals through a position statement adopted by its board and released to the public today, during Sudden Cardiac Arrest Awareness Month, an official national observance. PulsePoint is highlighted as an app that has great potential to increase bystander response and initiation of CPR and AED use.
The Sudden Cardiac Arrest Foundation announced its support of mobile apps designed to engage CPR-trained individuals, such as PulsePoint, through a position statement adopted by its board and released to the public, during Sudden Cardiac Arrest Awareness Month, an official national observance.
Sudden cardiac arrest (SCA) is a life-threatening emergency that occurs when the heart unexpectedly stops beating. It strikes people of all ages—356,500 times annually—and survival depends on the quick actions of people nearby to call 911, start CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation) and, if available, use an AED (automated external defibrillator).
The position paper supports and encourages broader use of mobile technology to initiate citizen response and increase the likelihood that CPR and AEDs will be deployed before first responders arrive. It specifically cites the most widely used and highly regarded mobile app is PulsePoint Respond, which alerts CPR-trained citizens to nearby episodes of SCA that occur in a public place, directs the citizen responders to the closest AED, and provides a CPR “How-To” instruction.
For extremely time-sensitive emergencies like cardiac arrest, notifying trained individuals that are in the immediate vicinity of an event, simultaneously with the established Fire/EMS response system, offers the potential to significantly improve outcomes. Because nearly 70 percent of SCAs occur in homes, a new professional version of the application called PulsePoint Verified Responder is being implemented to facilitate response by nearby, off-duty professionals to private homes.
“By directly alerting CPR-trained citizens nearby, maybe in the business next door or on the floor above, PulsePoint’s aim is to put the right people in the right place at the right time,” said Richard Price, president of the PulsePoint Foundation. “With more than 3,300 cities now connected to PulsePoint and with more than 1.4 million app subscribers, support and guidance from the Sudden Cardiac Arrest Foundation is helpful as we both work to decrease fatalities from SCA.”
“By engaging the public in a novel way, mobile technology creates a new conversation around the importance of being CPR and AED trained,” says Henry Jampel, MD, MHS, chairman of the SCA Foundation Board of Directors and an SCA survivor. “Our next generation of CPR-trained citizens are app savvy, connected and willing to participate in social networks that provide opportunities to make a meaningful difference. We believe that reaching critical mass in adopting new technology, like PulsePoint, can lead to improved outcomes with the hope that survival from SCA will one day become the norm, rather than the exception.”
According to the position statement, “The mission of the Sudden Cardiac Arrest Foundation is to increase awareness of, and prevent death and disability from, SCA. We believe that by using mobile technology, like PulsePoint, to simultaneously notify nearby CPR/AED-trained individuals at the same time as on-duty first responders, intervention can begin sooner in more cases, and may be of higher quality (e.g., multiple responders, off-duty professionals, etc.), ultimately increasing SCA survival rates.”
The position paper goes on to state that the SCA Foundation also strongly believes that communities should maintain an accurate registry of all public AED locations and PulsePoint AED, a companion app to PulsePoint Respond, is one such app that can help build and maintain these registries.
About the Sudden Cardiac Arrest Foundation (SCAF) The Sudden Cardiac Arrest Foundation is a national community benefit 501(c)(3) organization whose mission is to serve as an information clearinghouse and social marketing force focused on raising awareness about the prevention and treatment of sudden cardiac arrest. We are working to stimulate attitudinal and behavioral changes that will help save more lives. Specifically, we seek “To raise awareness and support programs that give ‘ordinary people’ the power to save a life.” Learn more at sca-aware.org or contact info@sca-aware.org.
About the PulsePoint Foundation PulsePoint is a 501(c)(3) non-profit foundation based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Through the use of location-aware mobile devices, PulsePoint is building applications that work with local public safety agencies to improve communications with citizens and off-duty personnel, empowering them to help reduce the millions of annual deaths from sudden cardiac arrest. Learn more at pulsepoint.org or join the conversation at Facebook and Twitter. The free app is available for download on iTunes and Google Play.
About Sudden Cardiac Arrest Although a heart attack can lead to sudden cardiac arrest (SCA), the two are not the same. SCA is when the heart malfunctions and suddenly stops beating unexpectedly, whereas a heart attack is when blood flow to the heart is blocked, but the heart continues to beat. Each year, more than 356,500 cardiac arrests occur outside hospitals, making it the third leading cause of death in the United States. Survival rates nationally for SCA are less than 10 percent, but delivery of CPR can sustain life until first responders arrive by maintaining vital blood flow to the heart and brain. However, only about a third of SCA victims receive bystander CPR. Without CPR, brain damage or death can occur in minutes. The average EMS response time is 12 minutes, even in urban settings; after 10 minutes there is little chance of successful resuscitation. The American Heart Association estimates that effective bystander CPR, provided immediately after SCA, can double or triple a person’s chance of survival.