Better education about sudden cardiac arrest and the use of defibrillators can go a long way to saving more golfers’ lives.
A golf course is a typical place for sudden cardiac arrest to occur, especially among the older population who may push themselves to walk the course to get some exercise. Yet it’s a topic that rarely gets discussed over a schooner or a pint at the 19th hole.
Typically, a person may feel some chest pain, heaviness or tightness, or shortness of breath and not realise it’s actually a heart attack, which precedes sudden cardiac arrest. But while there has been an increase of sudden cardiac arrest in the community, there has also been an increase in the number survivors because of awareness, education and public-access defibrillators.
“Sudden cardiac arrest can be a very daunting task for people who’ve never seen it or helped with one,” says Carpet Hughes, an intensive care paramedic with 35 years’ experience.
Hughes is a co-founder of Defibshop, a nationwide distributor of defibrillators. What began 15 years ago as side-hobby has morphed into a one-stop shop for anything to do with defibrillators, including a training and support facility.
“We’re passionate about it because we know that if we can teach people properly how to save a cardiac arrest patient, we can have people saving lives,” Hughes says. “You could be playing golf one day and have a cardiac arrest on the golf course… If your golf course is equipped with a defib, and your colleagues work on you, in another two or three weeks, you can be back playing golf.
“All they simply need is really good CPR, a defibrillator, paramedics to come along, and then we nowadays transport them directly to a catheter lab to have what’s called cardiac stents put into their heart. The next day they can be walking out of hospital feeling 1,000 percent.”
While the chain of survival is better than what it was 20 years ago, the bad news is we still have only a 10 percent survival rate from sudden cardiac arrest throughout Australia. And one of the reasons is a lack of education.
“In parts of North America and Canada, they have a survival rate of 65 percent,” Hughes says. “Because if you want to play a sport, you’ve got to have a first-aid certificate, which must include CPR and the use of a defib. You have to learn how to use a defibrillator in case one of your colleagues does go down on the golf course.”
Learning how to use a defibrillator takes a little time and a bit of expense. The theoretical side can be done through an online course in just a couple of hours. Add a couple more hours of practical experience – splinting, bandaging and playing with a training defibrillator – and you’re literally qualified to save somebody’s life, Hughes says.
“The defibrillator is a very simple tool to use if you know how. And if you know how, it can be a very powerful tool to use because you can literally have somebody sitting up in 90 seconds, talking.”
More defibrillators in golf clubs
There shouldn’t be a golf club anywhere in Australia that doesn’t have one or more Automated External Defibrillators (AED) located at their course, says Hughes. Depending on the features, the cost of a defibrillator ranges from about $1,700 to $3,500.
Some golf clubs have as many as eight located across the course. But one is better than none. Golf clubs need to assess where they should place AEDs, such as the clubhouse or the furthest point on the property. And it’s important to have all club employees training on the one model of defibrillator so they’re familiar and confident with it.
“Can we get a defibrillator from the clubhouse to that person and on their chest within about three or four minutes? Five minutes at the most? If the answer is, ‘No, we can’t,’ then we need to look at putting more defibs around the course.”
The heart is relatively easy to get going again, Hughes says. But it’s important to get the heart going as soon as possible because a brain starved of oxygen can result in a hypoxic brain injury.
“If we educate people how to use a defibrillator properly, we can cut down the amount of time somebody’s laying there without circulation to the brain… If I just put the pads – one on your leg and one up on the shoulder – it’s not going to work as well as if I put the pads in the right place, because then the shock will get through the heart and it’ll start the heart again. So a little bit of education is fantastic.”
For further information, visit defibshop.com.au
