Public access defibrillator installed in city downtown

A new life-saving device is now in downtown Helen.

The automated external defibrillator (AED) recently installed in the marketplatz was donated by Student Docs for Shocks, a non-profit organization that works to educate people about out-of-hospital cardiac arrest, said founder Chris Griesser.

“I have a background in emergency services and worked in that role for about 15 years before starting medical school, and there’s a lot of uncertainty in pre-hospital medicine,” Griesser said. “One thing that we just accept as just something that happens all the time and is OK is the fact that people who suffer sudden cardiac arrest outside the hospital, they’re going to die. To me, that’s not okay because there are ways we can impact survival and improve it.”

Griesser talked about the importance of the chain of survival, which depends on not only medical personnel, but also members of the public. The links of the chains are early notification of 911, chest compressions, early defibrillation, rapid transport to the hospital and then post cardiac arrest care and recovery.

“A lot of those links are covered by healthcare personnel, but the first few are, the public helps us with those,” Griesser said. “So we break that chain of survival if we don’t have the public’s help. Getting the public’s help means training people on how to do CPR and giving them the resources to affect survival. The main resource is the defibrillator, the AED, the goal is to get as many out to the public as possible.”

The AED in Helen is the first one that Student Docs for Shocks has donated. Griesser said the site was identified because there are often a lot of people about in the area.

The AED is in a climate controlled housing unit on the backside of the visitor information booth in the marketplatz in downtown Helen.

“All AEDs are the same,” Griesser. “They only have a couple of steps and the great thing about them being automated is they actually walk you through the steps. So no matter what brand it is, no matter what shape it is, no matter what it looks like, they all have the exact same procedure to get it to work. The other great thing about that is they are designed for the layperson, so you don’t need training to be able to use it. You also don’t have to have training to be able to use it. This AED, just like any AED in a public setting, is called a public access defibrillator, meaning anybody who walks by it can use it if any emergency comes up.”

For more information, contact studentdocsforshocks @gmail.com.