Stockport company save 100 lives at David Lloyd

Thanks to investment in AED technology David Lloyd health clubs today announced 100 lives have been saved following long-term investment in life-saving automated external defibrillators.

David Lloyd Leisure (DLL), with a club at Stockport’s Cheadle Royal, has been investing in state-of-the-art AED technology from Heaton Mersey-based manufacturers Cardiac Science.

Since 1998, David Lloyd Leisure have been building a network of AED protection across its 83 clubs in the UK and 11 clubs across Europe.

On 100 occasions the AEDS have been used to save lives.

With 26 million club visits a year from 444,000 members and a workforce of 6000, the health and safety team at David Lloyd Clubs has made AEDs readily accessible at every site, even though there is no UK legal requirement to do so.

Caleb Brown, Health and Safety Manager at DLL said: “AEDs have become so affordable, easy to deploy and learn to use, it’s really straightforward for a health club to get involved.”

While the survival rate for people who suffer outside-of-hospital sudden cardiac arrest (SCA) in the UK is less than 9 percent*, according to the Resuscitation Council (UK), the survival rate for someone who suffers SCA or other serious health incident at one of the DLL clubs in the UK was 86 percent in 2015.

All of the DLL clubs have Cardiac Science Powerheart® G5 AEDs Fully Automatic with CPR feedback. “I did a lot of research before upgrading to the Powerheart G5s,” Brown said. “It was definitely the right decision. We’ve had such success with Cardiac Science AEDs it would have been foolhardy to move away from the device.”

Ensuring readiness is paramount. Powerheart G5 AEDs include Rescue Ready® technology that conducts a rigorous automatic self-check of the main components (battery, hardware, software, and pads) every day.

When the device is nearing time to replace a battery or pads, the Rescue Ready indicator on the AED turns red and sounds an alert to bring attention to it.

With DLL sites increasing in number throughout Europe, it has also made full use of the dual language feature available within the G5.

Caleb, who took on a leadership role in the AED programme in 2006, has designed training for club employees that enables them to respond with maximum speed, confidence and efficiency when a cardiac incident occurs.

“Because of the voice prompts, even a bystander can use an AED,” Brown points out. “With a training programme, you give people the ability to react faster in an event, which is going to increase chances of survival.”

Ambulance response times are on average 8-12 minutes, but for an SCA victim, that is often too late. DLL’s goal has been to train staff to get the AED to the victim, and the defibrillator pads on the victim’s chest, within one minute.

Once the pads are attached, the AED can diagnose the heart rhythm, and, if appropriate, administer a shock automatically. The AED’s voice prompts coach the team through every step of the process, including administering CPR. The AEDs are programmed in accordance with the latest resuscitation guidelines, and DLL bases its training on those same guidelines.

“Some businesses overestimate the amount of training that is required for a successful AED programme,” Caleb says. “Our training is only two hours for an employee, once a year.”

DLL was named as the 2013 UK Heart Safe Gym of the Year and in became the first private leisure company to be accredited by the London Ambulance Services, based on its AED training and AED deployment.