"Restart a Heart Day raises awareness about cardiac arrest and helps people to learn CPR, giving them life saving skills and the confidence to use them," British Heart Foundation
This October, The Pitchmark Group joined a nation of lifesavers to commemorate and recognise the importance of 'Restart a Heart Day 2021'
Group Business Support Manager, Samantha Rodman, ran back-to-back sessions with all office-based staff, teaching CPR and giving The Pitchmark Group employees the confidence to use their new life-saving skills in a potential emergency situation.
"After witnessing what could have been a tragedy at the Euros with Christian Eriksen and the Denmark national football team, we thought that it would be important to equip our staff with these amazing life-saving skills - should we ever need them," Rodman expressed.
Supplied by the British Heart Foundation, The Call Push Rescue Kit comes with an inflatable manakin, kneeling pad, pump and storage bag, instructional DVD and more. Pitchmark Group employees were able to practise these skills in a COVID-19 secure environment, performing chest compressions on the manakin only.
To further help keep Pitchmark Group employees safe, Rodman also informed staff members where the closest public access defibrillator to the company site was using Heart Safe's AED Locations. Find your nearest defibrillator here.
Each participating employee was awarded with a Call Push Rescue award from the British Heart Foundation. Browse our photo gallery of our Pitchmark Group employees practising their new life-saving skills at our HQ in Bristol.
Why is Restart a Heart Day important?
Cardiac arrests have not stopped during the coronavirus pandemic. If you have an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest in the UK you have less than a one in ten chance of surviving.
We want to change that by making sure that as many people as possible know that when someone collapses and stops breathing normally, it is important to quickly call 999, perform hands-only CPR and use a defibrillator. This gives mums, dads, sons, daughters and friends the best chance of surviving.
Customer Service and HR Executive, Katie Yarwood, commented: "I felt the course was very well organised. The DVD material was very informative, and I came away from the session feeling confident that if I were to face an emergency situation - I would be able to use these skills to offer help efficiently,".
Make sure to follow the hashtag: #RestartAHeart to keep up with what's happening across the day. You can also follow all of our division's social media accounts here, where we will be posting more news stories including looking ahead to SALTEX 2021.