Five Automatic External Defibrillators (AEDs) acquired through a grant by Mountain People's Health Councils, Inc., have been donated to the Scott County Sheriff's Department, whose deputies will be trained to use them on heart attack victims.
The AEDs, which retail for approximately $2,000 each, were acquired by MPHC through a Rural Access to Emergency Decices Grant (AED) from the Tennessee Department of Health.
MPHC Executive Director Jan Laxton, who wrote the grant application, had originally intended to place the AEDS in MPHC clinics in Oneida, Huntsville, Winfield, Norma and Elgin. But because a provision of the grant stipulated that the AEDs had to be made available to the public 24 hours a day, and the clinics are not open around-the-clock, that plan had to be shelved. She has since learned that other grant funds are available for health clinics such as those operated by Mountain People's.
But rather than simply reject the defibrillators, Laxton, along with MPHC Medical Director Dr. Maxwell Huff, worked with the state and the Scott County Ambulance Service on a plan to let the Sheriff's Department utilize the lifesaving devices in its patrol cars.
"The Sheriff's Department is on the road 24 hours a day, seven days a week and they're usually just three to five minutes away from any call that comes in," Dr. Huff stated. "I think this is a step in the right direction to providing coverage county-wide."
Scott County Ambulance Service Director Jim Reed said that while details have yet to be worked out, initial plans are to begin training 44 Sheriff's Department employees - from dispatchers and jailers to deputies and detectives - on how to use the devices. That training could start as early as next month and the AEDs could be in service in county patrol cars with certified operators by the latter part of the month, Reed said.
"It's an eight-hour training course which will probably be taught by Paramedic John Norris and EMT-IV Jimmy Sexton," Reed said.
He called the AEDs an "almost foolproof" type of defibrillator that won't shock a person with a beating heart. He said the AEDs were the first thing needed for treatment of early cardiac arrest, and that a trained operator could possibly get a heart started beating again before trained emergency medical personnel arrived on the scene.
"The deputies are often the first on the scene . . . Sometimes they just happen to be there or near when an emergency arises," he stated.
Phyllis Griffith, administrative assistant for Sheriff Jim Carson, said she welcomes the opportunity to have Sheriff's Department personnel trained to operate the defibrillators. Many of the Sheriff's Department's employees are already trained to perform CPR, and at least two are former EMTs, she said.
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