In brief: Jersey’s health and emergency services are marking Restart a Heart Day with public events across the island, teaching islanders CPR and defibrillator skills. With fewer than one in ten out-of-hospital cardiac arrest victims surviving without intervention, organisers say bystander action can make all the difference.
What’s happening and where
Representatives from the Health Department, the Ambulance Service, Jersey Fire and Rescue and the Jersey Heart Support Group are out in force today, running free public sessions from 9am to 2pm. The Jersey Evening Post reports that events are taking place at West’s Centre and Brook Street in St Helier, and at the Enid Quenault Health Centre in St Brelade.
The sessions are designed to walk members of the public through the essentials: recognising a cardiac arrest, calling for help, performing CPR and operating a defibrillator. No prior training or medical knowledge is required, and that is rather the point.
Why it matters: the numbers are stark
The survival rate for out-of-hospital cardiac arrests is less than 10%, according to the Jersey Evening Post. That figure alone should be enough to get people through the door. Last year, there were 149 out-of-hospital cardiac arrests in Jersey, meaning the island sees roughly three such emergencies every single week.
Conor Quinn, resuscitation officer at the Health Department’s Resuscitation Service, put it plainly: “Immediate action” is needed when someone suffers a cardiac arrest. “CPR is easy to perform,” he said, “and if a collapsed person receives bystander CPR before they reach us in hospital their chances of survival are much greater.”
His message is straightforward: these are not skills reserved for medical professionals. “Through this event we want to show that anyone can learn these skills,” Mr Quinn added. In other words, the person who saves a life in a Jersey car park or supermarket is far more likely to be an ordinary islander than a paramedic, simply because they are there first.
A community effort worth supporting
Restart a Heart Day is an established annual initiative, and Jersey’s participation reflects a broader push to build what health professionals call a “chain of survival”: the sequence of actions, from recognition through to hospital care, that gives a cardiac arrest victim the best possible chance.
The involvement of multiple agencies, including fire and rescue alongside the ambulance service and the Heart Support Group, underlines that this is a whole-community effort rather than a narrow medical exercise. Defibrillators are increasingly common in public spaces around Jersey, but a machine is only useful if bystanders know how to use it and are confident enough to act.
For anyone who has ever wondered what they would actually do in an emergency, today’s events offer a practical, no-pressure answer. Sessions run until 2pm at all three locations.
Source: Jersey Evening Post
