THE online CPR and defibrillator advice session for sports clubs, organised recently by Donegal Sports Partnership (DSP), has been described as hugely successful.
The workshop was delivered by Aiden Thompson from Donegal Safety Training Solutions. Aiden is a PHECC paramedic and a first aid instructor.
Maggie Farrelly, Education and Training Coordinator with Donegal Sports Partnership, said: “The awareness session was very successful, firstly because of the volume of enquiries that we had about it – from those who couldn’t attend and wanted to know would it be recorded, to those wanting to know when we would be running a face-to-face accredited workshop.
“Our plan is to run the CPR/defibrillator face-to-face course in September or October, once it’s safe to do so.
“This will be an accredited qualification by the Irish Heart Foundation. The feedback from the awareness session was fantastic and the participants who attended really got something from it.”
The education and training coordinator added: “It created an opportunity for club coaches and mentors to realise the importance of getting help immediately to the patient, to remain calm and have the confidence to help the person in need.
“The session highlighted the importance of having a defibrillator accessible to all coaches and mentors, from where it is stored in the club grounds to where the key is kept. The session also focused on the importance of who maintains the defibrillator and who keeps it charged. The importance of having spare pads to use on patients and having pads suitable to use on children was also highlighted.”
The Irish Heart Foundation continues to encourage the public to learn how to do CPR. Someone who has learned CPR is ten times more likely to respond in an emergency, while CPR makes someone undergoing a cardiac arrest up to three times more likely to survive.
To view the DSP awareness workshop, see below
