Ms. Andrea Ritschel works in a medium-sized company with about 200 employees.
The company management has always placed great value on well-trained first aiders. This circumstance and the availability of a defibrillator saved Ms. Ritschel's life. One day she was not feeling well, her blood pressure was too high and her left arm hurt. As a result, she wanted to leave work early, but suddenly collapsed unconscious. Work colleagues who were trained in first aid recognized the situation immediately and intervened courageously. They performed cardiac massage and, via secondary helpers, ordered the defibrillator that the company had purchased about 4 years previously. This triggered the electric shock that was supposed to bring the heart back into rhythm. Ms. Ritschel only woke up from the coma in the hospital, but otherwise survived the event relatively unscathed. Today she lives with an implanted defibrillator and is still grateful that her company had brave first aiders and a defibrillator.
What does this teach us? First aid training and lay resuscitation should be a civic duty, and the number of locations where lay defibrillators are available should continue to increase. Because sudden cardiac arrest can happen to anyone, anywhere, at any time.
