- Red telephone boxes like this one are an icon of Britain,
or, well, they were.
Nowadays, the boxes that are left are falling into disrepair and ruin
because there's not much demand for payphones these days.
If a little village wants to save theirs,
then the phone company will sell it to them for £1,
enough to make the contract legal and binding,
but they won't keep the phone connected.
So what do you do with a disused phone box?
Well, one of the options being installed right here
might help to save lives.
Community Heartbeat Trust is currently the leading organisation
for the provision of community defibrillators in the UK.
Today we've probably positioned 6,500 community defibrillators or thereabouts.
It costs somewhere between around £1600 and £2200,
depending on the equipment.
- It turns out the logistics aren't quite as simple as
"buy a defibrillator and stick it in a box".
A defibrillator is a medical device,
if it's poorly maintained or it breaks, then it could be worse than useless.
It could actually do harm.
- There is no use just putting it in and then forgetting about it.
These need to be looked after
and it's got to be as good in several years' time
as it is on day one.
And it's got to be sustainable,
it's not just about raising funds initially,
it's also about ongoing costs and ongoing fundraising
to make sure that this is actually looked after
for the entire life that it's going to be in the community.
Well, the first thing we need to find out from the process is:
is the kiosk actually available?
They can't decommission it unless there's
a mobile phone signal for emergencies.
When a community contacts us,
we'll let the local ambulance service know that a defibrillator is going in,
and then it's available in an emergency.
When somebody phones 999, the ambulance service will be able to say
"There is a defibrillator,
"it's located at the phone box, on the corner of X and Y roads."
And if the cabinet is locked, they'll give an access code.
Once the defibrillator is used,
we just take out the old pads, put on new ones,
run a self check to make sure the defibrillator is working properly,
and then it's ready for action again.
- And there's another question: who pays for the power?
The box is connected to the national grid
so the light and the phone could work back when it was an actual phone box,
but it doesn't have an electricity meter. It's never needed one.
- The electricity is there to provide electricity for the cabinet
because there's a heater in the cabinet.
It's not for the defibrillator, the defibrillators all work off batteries.
And the heater in the cabinets
keeps the defibrillator above freezing in cold weather.
That's really quite important
because batteries do degrade in cold weather.
The electrodes are water gel so they will freeze.
British Telecom, who's the major phone company in the UK,
are the people who actually originally own these.
It actually costs BT money to take out the electricity.
So they would rather leave the electricity in,
what they do with us is: they donate that to us as charity
and then we provide the electricity to the community.
So the estimated cost for a kiosk to run it for a year is about £5-10.
- All of this might sound good in theory. But the question is:
could a bystander with no medical training actually use one of these to save a life?
To answer that, I've come to the headquarters
of the East of England Ambulance Service
who are going to let me try their training defibrillator.
It doesn't actually produce a shock, we just need to use it on a dummy,
but it is as realistic a simulation as it's possible to get.
So here's the story.
Someone has collapsed, someone else is doing CPR,
and I've been sent by the emergency operator to get this.
- So the very first thing you do is turn it on
and listen to the voice prompts.
It will tell you to follow it calmly, which is a really important thing to do.
- So we assume there's someone here doing CPR,
and now I have to take this...
On/Off. [defibrillator beeps]
- "Call Emergency Medical Services now." - Okay, we've done that.
- "Adult mode." - Yes.
- "Follow the voice prompt calmly." - Okay.
- "Remove all clothing from chest and stomach."
- It's really important that all of the clothing is removed,
we want a bare chest.
There are concerns over maintaining dignity...
life comes before dignity.
- Take out the pads from the bottom of the device, okay.
- The next thing it'll ask you is to apply the pads to the chest.
So the first pad, you're going to put on the patient's right shoulder,
the second pad you're going to put just below their left armpit.
- Just... there.
- "Peel off the pad labelled 2." - Okay.
- "And stick to the bare skin of the patient,
"exactly as shown in the picture."
- Exactly as shown in the picture, just below there. Okay.
[defibrillator beeps]
- "Do not touch the patient."
"Analysing heart rhythm."
- At this point, it will tell you not to touch the patient,
and that's really important,
it's going to be analysing that heart rhythm.
One of the ones it's going to be looking for
is where the heart is just wobbling around,
where there's no regularity to it and it is not able to pump blood.
What it needs to do then,
is stop that heart with an electric shock.
Once it's stopped it, the natural pacemaker of the heart
can kick back in and put the heart back into a normal rhythm
where it can pump blood.
- "Shock advised."
- Okay.
[defibrillator beeping]
- "Stand clear."
"Press the flashing orange button now."
[beep stops]
"Shock delivered."
"Begin CPR now."
- If they are in a rhythm that the AED can shock
it will increase their chance of survival about 10% per minute.
[rhythmic clicking]
- "Reanalyzing heart rhythm...
"...in one minute." - Oh.
- So I've arrived at a call where there is a defib,
it has been used and it's been used successfully.
And the patient has started breathing again
prior to my arrival.
- "Analysing heart rhythm."
- It is the human equivalent of turning someone off then on again.
- "Shock advised."
- If you haven't had any form of training, you can still use a defibrillator,
you shouldn't be prevented from doing it,
but you should be trained
in order to get the most efficient usage of that equipment.
- So I assume this would continue until emergency services actually arrive?
- So yes, once we arrive, we'll take over what you're doing.
We'll attach our defibrillator and take over management of the patient.
- I realised when it said "start CPR", that I don't actually know about that,
I only know what I've picked up from media?
So I'm hoping I was vaguely in the right position there.
- Yep, absolutely.
- I need to go do proper first aid training.
Thank you!
- Ideally, it could have done
with just being up a bit on the shoulder rather than there,
but, you know, that would have worked.
- That would work. - The main thing is,
that would have done the job. - Right.
- You were in the centre of the chest there,
doing the chest compressions, right speed. It was fine.
You would have saved their life,
if it was saveable, you would have done it.
Which is all that matters.
- Thank you very much!