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Health Service Forum South East
Minutes of a regular meeting of the Health Service Forum SE held on 13 April 2010 in the Larkfield Centre
Contents
Scottish Health Campaigns Network
Welcome
Margaret Hinds, Chair of the Health Forum, welcomed everyone to the meeting and introduced Anne Harrison, Community Resuscitation Officer, Scottish Ambulance Service. Anne is a trained paramedic with18 years service with the ambulance service. Her current post is co-funded by the British Heart Foundation.
Community First Responders
A Community First Responder is a local volunteer trained as a minimum in basic life support. This then enables him/her to provide life saving treatment to a critically ill person, within the community, in the first few minutes prior to the arrival of an ambulance.
Anyone feeling chest pains or suspecting a heart attack should dial 999 and ask for an ambulance. The brain suffers irreversible damage 3-4 minutes following a heart attack due to oxygen starvation. A blue light ambulance will attempt to reach the patient within 8 minutes. Already too late to save a person’s life. Should the patient survive serious damage to their health will have occurred if they are alive.
The Community First Responder can make all the difference by using a portable defibrillator the patient’s heart can be restarted. The defibrillator powered by a battery, once switched on, has a voice over giving clear instructions for use. The machine itself tunes in to the heart’s rhythm and instructs when to press the electric pulse button. The cost of a defibrillator starts at £1000 and goes up to £1800. Anne is endeavouring to convince all health & fitness clubs, shopping centres, supermarkets, etc. to invest in defibrillators.
It is job requiring physical fitness, ability to work as part of a team, be reliable and trustworthy and hold a drivering licence. The British Heart Foundation welcomes volunteers to assist in clerical, fund raising work, etc.
John and Diane Hodgkinson, whose son Craig died during a rugby match, are working tirelessly to raise funds to supply as many rugby clubs as they can with portable defibrillators. They are totally convinced that their son would have survived if the machine had been readily available.
The British Heart Foundation is running a Campaign Heartstart
Throughout her presentation Anne answered questions and gave further information. In turn the Forum advised her that we would ask the Scottish Health Campaigns Network to raise with the Health Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, the issue of making defibrillators obligatory within certain premises. A leaflet Saving lives in
Apologies
Apologies were received from Eric Canning, Dorothy Walls, David Smith, Irene Addie, Ruth Elworthy, May McClelland, Betty Milne
Minutes
The minutes of the 9 March 2010 had been circulated to members and adoption was proposed by Pat Lally seconded by Dan MacPhail.
Correspondence
a) 17 March wrote once again to Grant Hughes, Team leader for the Joint Improvement Team, in connection with a Leadership Summit and asking why we had not received an invitation as promised. No response.
b) Douglas McGregor e-mailed Richard Copland on 1 February requesting information from his November presentation to the Forum. No response as at 9 March 2010 or by 13 April although the secretary telephoned his office as a further reminder.
Treasurer's Report
Mary Hamilton reported a balance in the bank of £1884.47
Scottish Health Campaigns Network
The Meeting of the Scottish Health Campaigns Network with Nicola Sturgeon has been postponed due to electioneering. Rescheduled for 20 May 2010.
AOCB
The new General Electric Discovery 64 slice Computer Tomography (CT) machine , the first of its kind in
Next meeting 11 May 2010
John Goldie from Community Drug Addiction Team
