RE: CPR/AED use in LAw Enforcement

In our agency with the CPR re-cert, AED is now required. It is not a difficult device to use and really only adds about 1-2 hours to the CPR re-cert program. I did not sense reluctance in any of our personnel. An AED is in the trunk of each vehicle. If one is there to protect and serve, this is but another tool to accomplish that goal. Training in anything pays in it's ability to motivate. Just convince your fellow officers that they may one day need to use it on one of their own. AED's may save an officers life when the CPR has failed.

RE: CPR/AED use in LAw Enforcement

My current agency is a state regulatory agency. We have AED's in the headquarters building for employees or visitors, but do not have them in the cars. We are in the process of asking for volunteers assigned to the building to go through the AED class. So far, we have 13 volunteers out of 300 employees. We need 20 to make the class (taught by another agency with minimum attendance requirements). The good news is that we have not needed one in the building yet.

My previous agency was a small rural department. We had AED's in the car and certification was mandatory. We also had very little reluctance to take the class, though. One of the unusual things about this was that the police responded to every EMS call in town anyway, so we knew we would eventually need them (we usually could get to the scene a couple minutes before the EMS unit). While I did have to give CPR twice on patrol before we got the AED's, I don't know if they have been used yet. There were no calls for them between when we got them and my leaving about 8 months later.

Park Officer

I work for a metropolitan park district in Columbus Ohio. We started carrying AED's in our primary patrol vehicles about five years ago due to the fact that we have several rural parks where medics may take 10-15 minutes or longer to respond. Last year I had the opportunity to be the first Officer in our park district to use and AED when a visitor suffered a major heart attack while playing basketball. My partner and I just happened to be right around the corner when we got the call. We started CPR and applied the AED within two minutes of the visitor collapsing. Medics arrived within six minutes and stabilized the visitor for transport. The victim underwent a quadruple bypass and eventually made a full recovery. Doctors and medics advised that our quick response was criucal in helping save the man's life. It was a very rewarding experience.

We train all of or employees including maintenance and interpretive naturalist to use our AED's. Several of our officers are certified instructors and we re-certify every two years in AED/CPR/& First Aid. The real incident was just like we had practiced in training (more stressful obviously) and we did not hesitate to push the button. My supervisor is one of our instructors. If you need more info please feel free to contact me at ahoffmanranger@yahoo.com

AED use

The AED has become another manditory tool for every patrol vehicle, including all motor units and bicycles. It wasn't long after a faculty member expired from heart complications that we were soon toting around these "lunchboxes" to every medical emergency call.

Agreed, this is a great, easy to use, life saving tool which requires little brain activity. Most AEDs are open, stick and "start," so I can't say I've heard much griping from anyone. My guess is that cost will always be a factor but the AED is well worth any dollar amount.

This is just one more sign that more and more departments are beginning to train personnel with EMT certificaiton and that's not a bad idea.