The Blackhorse Pike School District offers a lifesaving program for children to aid in saving lives using Automatic External Defibrillators (AED’s). Staff is also provided training in CPR and AED usage. The Blackhorse Pike School District presently provides education for over 4,000 children each school year. This school has been ranked in the top 75 elementary school in New Jersey. This is located in a growing area and expects to have a population increase of about 20 percent in the next 10 or so years. Over the years, children are seen more with asthma, cardiac issues, diabetes, and allergies. This can be life threatening illnesses and we can help these children to live longer, healthier lives with the proper education and equipment. This school district has one AED per building and only those nurses who are trained are allowed to operate them. If a child became unresponsive other staff are most likely not educated and trained on CPR or AED usage. Only teachers, nurses, and coaches are required to be trained in these. With this being said, this program’s purpose is to have all staff trained to save lives. All hallways will have an AED installed and staff will know how to use it as well as be CPR certified. Research shows in the event of a cardiac arrest, the time from witnessed arrest to the delivery of a shock from the AED should be no longer than five minutes for the best outcomes (American Heart, 2010). This has to do with an This is due to the fact that about half of witnessed cardiac arrests are the shockable rhythm of ventricular fibrillation for the first few minutes of arrest. With each hallway having access to an AED, help will be provided to shock within the recommended time frame and increase the number of children who survive a cardiac arrest (American Heart, 2010).…
