Chanterlands Crematorium received their defibrillator from defibshop, bought as part of an order for Hull City Council earlier this year. The defibrillator, which is a Heartsine Samaritan Pad 360P, had only been delivered to the premises 2 weeks before a gentleman suffered a cardiac arrest while attending his father’s funeral.

After delivery his father’s eulogy, the 62-year-old returned to his seat with his family and was overcome with emotion as music played throughout the chapel, in remembrance of his father.

Minutes later, he collapsed, and the minister used the panic alarm to alert there was an emergency. With 4 first aiders on site, Carl Skinn was the first to arrive at the scene and found the gentleman unconscious and not breathing in his chair. Moving him to the floor, Carl and one of his first aider trained colleagues began their assessment and proceeded to start CPR. With Carl delivering compressions and his colleague performing rescue breaths, Richard Barker, the manager of the funeral home, rushed to retrieve the defibrillator.

Placed on the gentleman’s chest, the defibrillator diagnosed that he needed a shock and delivered the first of 2 shocks that saved his life. After the first shock, Carl and his colleague continued CPR until a second shock was delivered. After the second shock, the paramedics arrived, and the gentleman began to regain consciousness and was breathing.

He received a further 2 shocks on the way to and while in the hospital and his family were asked to go to the hospital during the night, as they believed he wouldn’t recover. Gladly, he made it through the night to text his daughter in the morning “I’m still here.” He is now recovering well in hospital, sitting up and talking and laughing with his family.

The gentleman had suffered a heart attack 2 week previously and thanks to the actions of Richard, Carl and his colleague, he is still here for his family, including his two young children (6, 2), who has just lost their grandfather.

Carl told us that he had been pushing the council to purchase defibrillators for years and was over the moon when the health and safety team recommended they were installed. He said “I felt like having the defibrillator with us was like having another person in the room helping us to save him. They are wonderful devices and I think every premise should have one!” By sharing Carl’s heroic actions, he hopes that more businesses will take heed and purchase a defibrillator to protect their employees.

Richard believed that without the defibrillator onsite, the gentleman wouldn’t be alive today. Having also received training from defibshop, Richard said he had attended the training to give his staff support. However, he found himself having to use the defibrillator only weeks later and found that his confidence in using it was there, thanks to the training. Richard told us “I’m very glad we have a defibrillator and that we had it in this situation. Now, this has happened, we are speaking with the council to look at getting more defibrillators across all of the council buildings and the community”.

Cardiac arrest can happen to anyone, at any time. The only definitive treatment for a victim of cardiac arrest is immediate CPR and defibrillation. If administered in 3-5 minutes following a collapse, the chance of survival goes from 6% to 74%.

To read more of our survival stories, visit our survival story page. To find out more about defibrillators, visit our defibrillators page or call one of our helpful team on 0845 071 0830.