Salisbury St John Ambulance aiming to build public first aid confidence
Volunteers will be in the Market Place today showing us some techniques
St John Ambulance is aiming to increase our confidence in life-saving skills in Salisbury’s Market Place today (Saturday 21st October).
The charity’s annual ‘Restart a Heart’ campaign comes to the city and gives us a chance to learn more about how we could help save a life.
Salisbury-based volunteer Alex Thompson told us the campaign’s focus is on how they can bring the knowledge of saving lives to the general public.
During the day, we will be able to learn the basics for CPR and how to use a defibrillator.
Research by the charity found the South West has the lowest awareness for defibrillator locations.
Community First Aid vision
Alex told Greatest Hits Radio that the charity is always striving for greater awareness and increased knowledge, especially with the NHS being put under a lot of pressure at the moment.
He says St John’s has a vision of community first aid saving lives.
“How do we build resilient communities that have this knowledge that mean if my neighbour or one of one of the local residents around where I live was to have an incident or have an episode?
“How can we be in the community and able to provide that support to them not to replace the National Health Service clearly but to be there as a as a preliminary support to the NHS while they while they make their way?”
The earlier mentioned research found that less than a third of people were confident in their first aid skills, which make campaigns like Restart a Heart vital for the St John’s cause.
Alex told us that the research had helped the charity gain an understanding of what people were worried about, with knife-wounds and overdoses being prevalent last December when the survey began.
“By knowing what it is that the public feel like they could use some help with, it helps us tailor the community training that we deliver.”