Restart a Heart Day was marked at University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust (UHB) by a team of staff on hand to teach passers-by lifesaving skills.

Restart a Heart Day is a designated day of action across the world with the aim to teach vital, lifesaving CPR skills to as many people as possible. In the UK, the aim is to reach over 200,000 people and teach them crucial lifesaving skills. This year, the theme was ‘all citizens of the world can save a life’. If someone suffers a cardiac arrest outside of hospital, their chance of survival varies dramatically from country to country and is often dependent on an automated external defibrillators (AED) being available and bystander cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR).

Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham (QEHB) hosted Restart a Heart Day in the Main Atrium of the hospital, and offered members of the public the chance to learn these vital lifesaving skills. The Trust’s Resuscitation Team provided a range of activities, including how to know if someone is in cardiac arrest, how to perform CPR, and how to use a public access AED. The Resuscitation Team also demonstrated other lifesaving skills, such as choking interventions and what to do in a paediatric arrest.

Marion De Almeida Santos, Resuscitation Officer and event organiser at UHB said: “The day was a great success. The event is a brilliant way to raise awareness of lifesaving skills, and a great opportunity to meet patients, staff and the public and show them how to use an AED and give CPR to those suffering a cardiac arrest.

“We trained over 160 people and as a team did six hours of CPR. We met a variety of people and trained ages ranging from three years old to over 70.’’

Dr Rob Goulding volunteered his racing car, which he uses to publicise the Resuscitation Council Life Saver app and to raise money for charity, to display outside of QEHB.