Man reunited with Kent ambulance team that saved his life

It comes as the South East Coast Ambulance Service had a record year for saving lives from cardiac arrests.   Finn Macdiarmid reports.

Transcript

00:00As part of their National Heart Month scheme, South East Coast Ambulance Service reunited

00:04Chris Mills, who suffered a cardiac arrest at the end of last year, with the team who

00:08saved his life.

00:09So we were just walking to the shops from our house with Brenda and then I just suddenly

00:17collapsed and the next thing I knew I was waking up in hospital. So Brenda knew what

00:23was going on.

00:24He just went down like a ton of bricks. I was trying to get him round, feel for pulse

00:29and luckily for us there was an off-duty nurse coming back from Starbucks with her family

00:35and she just took over.

00:38Two paramedic crews were on the scene and the response time was particularly quick,

00:42but since Chris was unconscious throughout the process, he wasn't able to meet them

00:45until now, and they say it makes a big difference for the entire team.

00:50It's amazing every time. Out-of-hospital cardiac arrest is around about 9% survival

00:57rate and for us you can go months, even years, that you don't get anyone back. It's just

01:07a wonderful thing for everyone because it's effectively what we do our job for.

01:13The meet-up event comes after a report revealed that CCAM had their highest ever and national

01:17leading survival rate for out-of-hospital cardiac arrests. The service are urging people

01:22to sign up to a local life-saving course near them, as well as an app called GoodSAM that

01:27alerts trained users to nearby heart attacks. The rate is 11.5% between 2023 and 2024 and

01:34represents 307 lives saved, but some say there's still more work to be done.

01:39We found for years that survival from out-of-hospital cardiac arrest is lower than it should be

01:44and in many cases that's because those early interventions, that early CPR, early defibrillation

01:50isn't happening as quickly as it needs to.

01:53So after Sam showed me the basics, I had a go myself.

01:57So you found someone who may be going under a cardiac arrest, you've tried to wake them,

02:01you've now called 999 and you've got your operator there telling you what to do and

02:05walking you through the process. The next step is to actually administer CPR. You want

02:09to do it about to the tune of staying alive or baby shark, locking your hands like this

02:13and placing them just in the centre and then just keeping that same beat.

02:20The ambulance team say that learning the skills to keep someone's heart pumping long enough

02:24for them to arrive and the early response to cardiac arrest can be the difference between

02:28a life saved and a life lost. And for them, this means they can have the chance to meet

02:32someone who they saved with their own hands.

02:34Finn McDermid for KMTV in Gillingham.