Do you know where your AED is?

Posted at 11:13 AM on February 7, 2012 by Bob Collins (3 Comments)
Filed under: Health

An unidentified woman at the airport in Duluth is alive today, because someone knew where an automatic external defibrillator was located and used it to restart her heart.

Many companies -- I think mine is one of them, but I'm not entirely sure -- have AEDs tucked into a wall somewhere, but they're not helpful if people don't know where they are.

New Zealand has the right idea. There, volunteers have set up a directory of AED locations.

A company makes a wireless product that will automatically locate a nearby AED, but the $399 product is mostly intended for emergency responders and most of them already carry a defibrillator.

Then there's the matter of how to use the AED if you can find one. When your cubicle neighbor is toes up, you don't want to be reading instructions. Maybe this will help:

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Comments (3)

I know where ours is in the office and I am one of the few people in the office trained to use it.

Posted by josh | February 7, 2012 12:39 PM

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I was flying out of Sky Harbor (Phoenix) and had a terrifying ordeal. A man behind us collapsed. The TSA agents milled around for a while until a pilot, walking through security, noticed the man and started first aid. He sent an agent off to get an AED that was 200 feet away. She STOPPED as she ran back and yelled to another "agent": "Hey, come get this! I'm out of breath!"

Sorry to turn this into a TSA rant, but between the millimeter wave/radar scans and the ineptitude displayed by the agents at this gate, I have nothing but spite for that agency.

Full circle: at least they knew where it was, even if they couldn't get to it very quickly.

Posted by Tyler | February 7, 2012 1:01 PM

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We have a few of them and I know where they are. We also have a fire station in our building, so we have very quick responder times.

A couple years ago we had one stolen. It was in a secure area, so one of our employees did it. The thought was that there is some resale value on them.

Posted by Kassie | February 7, 2012 1:32 PM

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