A chance to learn how to save a life is being offered at two cardiac awareness sessions in Frome this month.
The Friends of Frome Hospital will be highlighting an important part of their community outreach programme by offering the sessions at the Cheese & Grain on Saturday 29th June.
This highly-acclaimed initiative is a result of the Friends’ ground-breaking four-year campaign to install a network of 23 publicly-available defibrillators (PAD) units around Frome, and in the local villages that are served by the medical teams from the town’s Enos Way, Health Park.
Frome is one of the first communities to install such a density of PAD units that cover every aspect of public and industrial life where people live, work or play.
Highly-trained first responders, from locally based EFA Training, will be leading the hour-long awareness sessions to demonstrate the procedures to manage the situation in the event of someone having a cardiac arrest, which can happen to anyone, of any age, at anytime, anywhere! It is estimated that 60,000 people suffer this unexplained trauma in the UK each year. The Friends hope that people will take an hour out to attend this life education lesson on how to stay calm and address a life-threatening situation.
Already over 1,000 people have attended previous public awareness sessions, and the Friends have also introduced extra-curricular awareness sessions to a similar number of students at Selwood and Oakfield Academies.
The Friends of Frome Hospital were the driving force that lobbied for the new hospital, which was opened in 2008, and who raised and invested £600,000 of community money for a diverse range of supplementary fixtures, furniture and equipment that was not available within the NHS £11million building project. In the past ten years, a further £150,000 has been made available to support the Friends’ philosophy ‘here to enhance patient care’.
Increasingly, the Friends’ health-care remit has extended beyond the Health Park site, with help being offered to several specialist support groups in the town, typically to dementia and cancer care groups. Also, health awareness amongst children is a new three-year commitment, with the Friends funding the Life Education Wessex travelling classroom to visit all 14 schools in the area, teaching a range self-care issues to children from as young as five about basic anatomy, through progressive levels up to senior students where the lessons address social issues such as drugs and peer pressure.
A spokesperson for the Friends of Frome Hospital said, “The Friends are so proud to have achieved so much, moving on from the fundraising group prior to the opening of the hospital, through to our developing outreach programmes in the community. None of this could have been achieved without the phenomenal support from the people of Frome.
“Future plans will include even more focus on community projects in the awareness of how good health can benefit everyone, so we will always examine the ways we can help and continue to gain the respect from the public. Our CPR/defibrillator event at the Cheese & Grain will allow us to showcase some of the activities we are involved in”
