OnQue would like to introduce you to Clinical Associate Professor Paul Middleton, one of our very special collaborators.
Professor Middleton’s list of accolades is extensive; he is the founder of Take Heart Australia a public health advocacy and educational organisation designed to include all Australians in a mission to increase survival from sudden cardiac arrest. Professor Middleton is also Chair of the Australian Resuscitation Council NSW branch and Director of the Australian Institute for Clinical Education, as well specialising in pre- hospital and emergency medicine. He has also miraculously found the time to author ‘What To Do When Your Child Gets Sick’ (2010) a book dedicated to teaching parents and other carers how to recognise sick and injured children.
Amazingly the list above hasn’t even scratched the surface… First and foremost, lets focus on Take Heart Australia; how under Professor Middleton’s guidance the organisation is successfully helping to save lives across Australia.
This is a cause that OnQue Digital believes in and we are supporting both Paul and Take Heart Australia through our digital production and marketing work.
In Australia currently 12,000 people will potentially die unnecessarily from cardiac arrests. There is a 9% survival rate and 95% of victims will die before reaching a hospital.
Professor Middleton places himself in an alarming hypothetical, "If I stand outside my house tomorrow and my heart stops, I have got three to four minutes until irreversible brain damage, and that means somebody has got to start doing CPR on me to make sure my blood starts flowing," he said. "The fastest ambulance service in the world will not get there in time."
In major cities such as New York, the average response time for an ambulance is 6.1 minutes. The average wait time for an Uber car (an app led driving service) is 2.42 minutes in Manhattan, and 3.1 minutes in the outer boroughs which has created interest around the app potentially also acting as an emergency service.
This 6.1 minute median does not include activation time - the time period between your call and an ambulance being dispatched. It also does not factor in wait time for transferal to an operator, so in essence you could be looking at 10 minutes or more.
In Sydney the median wait time for an ambulance is anywhere between 7.65 to 10.78 minutes, which in the case of a cardiac arrest event, is all too often, too late.
Professor Middleton states, “The first five minutes holds the key to survival. We need more people who are trained and willing to provide immediate CPR, more and easily accessible defibrillators and we need a coordinated healthcare system.”
The American Heart Association, a leader in CPR programs has recently developed a unique School Training Kit, designed to train 10 to 20 students simultaneously. Within 30 minutes, a student will learn the skills to be able to save a life. US statistics are as similarly shocking as here in Australia, with approximately 48 people every hour having a cardiac arrest event outside hospital. Nine out of ten of these people will not survive, however by performing lifesaving CPR a victims chance of survival can be doubled or even tripled. By making CPR education compulsory in schools the process of equipping young people with lifesaving skills could successfully be put into action.
Seattle has taken this approach one step further with emergency physicians and Senior emergency medicine technicians from Medic One, a highly effective ambulance service based in Seattle City and King Country, establishing the Resuscitation Academy. The core message of the academy is the importance of communities working together as single systems to ensure the best survival rate from cardiac arrest events - beginning with the bystander. Curating active campaigns that inform, persuade and educate entire communities about the necessity of immediate recognition of the problem and initiating instant CPR and AED use as quickly as possible, is another cornerstone of their success.
Seattle now has achieved a survival rate of over 61% compared to our own 9%, a staggering difference which impacts both lives and cost of care across the community.
Professor Middleton states that, “As a result, the population as a whole is responsive and primed to take responsibility to save the life of the victim who was standing next to them only a few moments previously. They joke that you can't fall asleep in a Seattle park in the summer sun, as someone will immediately start pushing on your chest!”
The American Heart Association has also published a series of narrative videos for effective digital promotion of these health awareness issues, which are featured on youtube or at CPR Schools website.
Professor Middleton also adopted this narrative video approach, creating a CPR video on his recent trip to Antarctica, which you can click through to here.
Professor Middleton promotes the ‘you can do it anywhere style’ video, which will be used for promotional purposes across a range of Take heart Australia’s digital platforms.
Contact Take Heart Australia to find out how you can help raise awareness of cardiac arrest related events.
Follow Take Heart Australia here to keep up to date with what’s happening in the organisation and how you can help.
Contact OnQue to hear more about digital promotion, digital optimization and our unique collaborations.