No more kissing
Our Head of Policy and Advocacy,
Maura Gillespie, talks about getting up close and personal to a new
kind of CPR.
Tuesday, 03 January 2012
When I found out that you can keep someone alive after a
cardiac arrest without having to get ‘up close and
personal’ by doing the kiss of life bit,
I thought, wow, we should tell as many people as
possible!
The fact that you have enough oxygen in your
blood to keep you alive, as long as someone keeps it pumping around
your body by pushing your chest until an ambulance
arrives, was news to me. Having done CPR training some
time ago I, like many, couldn't really remember how many
pushes or breaths you needed to do during CPR. Hands-only CPR immediately seemed like a great
technique, one I'd be much happier doing on a
stranger.
We've had a long history of improving
survival rates from cardiac arrests, we run a full
emergency life-saving course called Heartstart and fund
defibrillators in public places. We're even campaigning to get
Emergency Life Support Skills as a mandatory part of the curriculum so every child
leaves school knowing how to save a life.
We set out to produce a TV advert which will save lives
So,
for our latest campaign we set out to produce a
TV advert that will save lives. An
advert that willl teach people hard and fast
Hands-only CPR in 40 seconds. An advert
that will be memorable and empower people to save someone
else’s life. There have been well known adverts in the past
that have saved countless lives - like the "clunk click every trip"
seat belt ad, or the Green Cross Code commercials. I wanted this
one to be equally successful.
Getting permission from the Bee Gees to use
their song Stayin’ Alive was a stroke of good luck; hopefully it
will be catchy and the sort of thing that will stay in
people’s minds as a reminder that you should push
fast.
Meeting Vinnie
And who better to demonstrate that you should
push hard than one of Britain's best loved hard
men, Vinnie
Jones!
Vinnie was fantastic to work with. It was
great of him not only to do the advert but also
the longer training video and,
like the Green Cross Code man, he'll never know just how many
lives he will save in the future.
We hope that people like the advert and the
training video and pass it on to their friends and family. The
more people who know that Hands-only
CPR can keep someone alive the
better.
As Vinnie says: “Hands-only CPR, it's
not as hard as it looks.”