Defibrillator on board

[Heckler]

I assume that before butting one on board a boat one would first put one in your home and another in your car.

Life is full of risk.

Crossing the Atlantic, 3 weeks out of touch, people like me with AF? Good call I reckon!
Stu
PS as for BoB reply, not very nice that!

 

[A1Sailor]

Sorry I meant - mechanism of injury is important to the rhythm...

Clearly you will get cardiac arrests on a boat due to conventional MIs.

BUT - you will get traumatic injury arrests. Head injuries, hypothermia, drowning etc... I'm not sure they result if VF arrests - or maybe they do but because you need to deal with the other stuff they have already become non-shockable by the time you've got them back on board etc.

Indeed - but my point was that if you don't do BLS/CPR there may not be any point in having a defibrillator because the casualty may not be in VF for very long.
I'm not a great fan of anecdotes, but here's one from a memorable in-hospital cardiac arrest call:
- patient "arrests" on a medical ward
- medical & anaesthetic registrars summoned from another building 4 floors and what feels like half a mile away!
- on arrival, patient in asystole so pretty much dead

Ward Sister mentions he had been in VF - but she wasn't "cleared" to use the defib. I respectfully suggested that she got herself "cleared" so that she could look after her patients to an acceptable standard.
I suspect the inference was that we should have run faster.

Edit:
The Resuscitation Council (UK) guidelines for BLS/AED and ALS are here for those interested:
https://www.resus.org.uk/resuscitation-guidelines/

 

[Sybarite]

(999) "Help my husband has collapsed and I think he may be dead...!!!"

"Could you please make sure?"

Bang! (gunshot...)

"OK. Now what?"