Picture this situation: a member of the public collapses in front of you, they are not breathing and have no pulse. Remembering your First Aid training, you recognise this as a cardiac arrest, begin Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (CPR) and call 999 who refer you to the nearest Automated External Defibrillator (AED) to your location.

After sending another bystander to collect the AED, you attach the electrodes to the casualty’s chest and wait for the device to analyse. The AED recommends a shock, and ultimately delivers three shocks before the casualty regains a heartbeat and is taken to hospital.

What seems like a heroic act to almost everyone may have actually been against the wishes of the person who suffered the cardiac arrest. So, can they actually take legal action against you for saving their life if they didn’t want you to?

While the final of Euro 2024 ended in disappointment for England fans, the tournament was a major win for education around cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and Sudden Cardiac Arrest (SCA).

Training in CPR was given in partnership with the European Resuscitation Council at fan zones across Germany. The campaign’s aim was to educate football fans, players and coaches on SCA and increase rates of bystander CPR.

As the dust settles on a historic landslide victory for the Labour Party, one glaring absence was clear in each major party's manifesto throughout the election.

Neither Labour, Conservatives, Liberal Democrats, the Green Party or Reform UK mention defibrillators in their manifesto. With around 60,000 deaths as a result of Out of Hospital Cardiac Arrests (OHCA) each year in the UK, how can such a major issue be overlooked completely?

When someone suffers cardiac arrest the only definitive treatment is CPR and a shock from a defibrillator, but a defibrillator will only shock what it deems as a “shockable rhythm”.

An Automated External Defibrillator (AED) will first analyse the rhythm of the casualty’s heart and only deliver a shock if the heart is in a certain rhythm, but what is a shockable rhythm?