Schools get life-saving gift from local hospital
A push is on to make sure that every school in the state has potentially life-saving technology on hand in the form of Automated External Defibrillators, or A.E.D's. Most schools need help though.
Health officials say that for every minute a person is in cardiac arrest, without successful treatment by defibrillation, the chance of survival decreases by seven percent in the first three minutes and ten percent per minute after that.
And a person can go into cardiac arrest at any age, so efforts are being made to get them into all schools in Oregon.
This week, Bay Area Hospital, in conjunction with the Bay Area Hospital Community Foundation, saw to it that in Coos County that would no longer be a problem.
"First and foremost we're the hospital for the community, the hospital for the region," says Hospital CEO Paul Janke. "But, we also, every year, try to make funds available, I think this last year it was about $180,000, so that organizations that are small, struggling, not for profit organizations, can have funds available."
He says the recent awarding of AED's came about after they got a grant request from Coos Bay School District Nurse Karen Brown.
They took her request a step further and made sure that every school in Coos County that did not currently have an AED got outfitted with one.
Janke says it just seemed like a great idea. "I mean, the technology is really a modestly expensive technology."
Brown says the awarding of the AED's was a great boost and added that they did their homework about what AED's to get.
"I think the EMS(paramedics) is going to really appreciate it. Everything we did was to model our EMS so that when they come they don't have to change equipment out, they can just use them and it's all compatible."
Bay Area Hospital distributed a total of 22 units at a cost of about $30,000, according to Janke.
Health officials say that for every minute a person is in cardiac arrest, without successful treatment by defibrillation, the chance of survival decreases by seven percent in the first three minutes and ten percent per minute after that.
And a person can go into cardiac arrest at any age, so efforts are being made to get them into all schools in Oregon.
This week, Bay Area Hospital, in conjunction with the Bay Area Hospital Community Foundation, saw to it that in Coos County that would no longer be a problem.
"First and foremost we're the hospital for the community, the hospital for the region," says Hospital CEO Paul Janke. "But, we also, every year, try to make funds available, I think this last year it was about $180,000, so that organizations that are small, struggling, not for profit organizations, can have funds available."
He says the recent awarding of AED's came about after they got a grant request from Coos Bay School District Nurse Karen Brown.
They took her request a step further and made sure that every school in Coos County that did not currently have an AED got outfitted with one.
Janke says it just seemed like a great idea. "I mean, the technology is really a modestly expensive technology."
Brown says the awarding of the AED's was a great boost and added that they did their homework about what AED's to get.
"I think the EMS(paramedics) is going to really appreciate it. Everything we did was to model our EMS so that when they come they don't have to change equipment out, they can just use them and it's all compatible."
Bay Area Hospital distributed a total of 22 units at a cost of about $30,000, according to Janke.
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