Contact the British Heart Foundation. We did ~8 months ago & they helped pay 50% of cost of purchasing an AED (on the basis that we made it available to others in the neighbourhood) They also arranged free training for the first aiders on site. AED is idiot proof and you do not need training to use it It paid off for them too - since we arranged a charity day for them earlier this year. Liability - IMHO just an urban myth that first aiders get sued for doing something

You might also contact the Community Heartbeat trust for some advice and direction. They can assist with discounted products etc.

Before you do purchase an AED, you might want to talk to your local ambulance service and try and get them same machine as they use. Not an absolutely essential issue but as many now have SD cards that log the incident it is easier for them also to simply remove your SD Card and up load the info. They may also be able to assist with the training, if not there are many trainers out there who will provide a certificate from a registered body to Level 2. That I am aware of there has not been a successful prosecution of a first aider for trying to save a life. Regards Clive

Really appreciate your comments on this Thanks everyone for your help

There are 2 articles in SHP about AEDs. The second one covers is some detail bout liability. The nub of the liability part was if someone has a sudden cardiac arrest and their heart has stopped, they are clinically dead. Strapping an AED and trying to restart their heart is doing something good for that person and if used in a timely fashion it will increase the victims chance of survival of 75%. I wouldn’t be worried about being sued. We have recently bought the ZOLL AED PLUS also. Not sure which ones are the best. I guess each AED has it’s pros and cons. Each organisation will have their interests on a specific one also because of its pros and cons. Check them out on line. Try and touch and feel them. Also the siting of the unit. If you have 900 people it will be a fare size of a building/area. Is the first aid room the best place for it to be sited? Will someone go to the first aid room with chest pains or are they likely to go to ground where they are? My point is, if your first aid room is on the ground floor of a 20 story building or 2 miles form the main bulk of staff then there’s some way to fetch the defib to the victim. I’m not saying to follow this but have a think where the main workforce are and the distance to the kit.

Definitely make AED's available in the office but it sounds like you need more than one given the size of the building (unless you have 900 people in a chicken farm!). 1 per floor seems reasonable. Try and estimate the furthest someone could possibly be from the AED and how long it would take you to retrieve it, time is critical.

James - Thanks for the mention of my article in SHP (and SHPEditor, thanks for providing the hyperlink to it). This is a subject I'm passionate about – Not long ago, whilst on holiday abroad, I saw a man die in an airport of a cardiac arrest. It was not nice, and not something you forget. The first aiders were pounding away with CPR for what seemed an age. I couldn’t believe the length of time it took to get a defib to the scene – in most UK airports they are readily available. When the AED eventually arrived they deployed it (several times) but to no avail. Reading the posts below, I’d stress the point that any legal action by bereaved relatives against a person or organisation who deploys a defib, but where the casualty nevertheless dies, is most unlikely to succeed. A defib will only fire its shock if the person is already clinically dead – so it can’t make their condition worse (a pre-requisite for “negligence”). In other posts about defibrillators I’ve seen misguided comments like “if there’s no one around who’s been trained in the use of AEDs then it must remain in its case”. Please note the comments at the very end of the SHP article. The Resuscitation Council UK unequivocally state that “the use of an AED should NOT be restricted to trained rescuers”. To those of you who are considering buying an AED, I’d echo what Clive has to say about this and suggest talking to your local ambulance service. As you’ll see in the article a spokesman for the ambulance service has offered to act as a central point of contact. Just email Kevin.Dickens@swast.nhs.uk , give your address and postcode and he will route the enquiry to the appropriate Trust for you. Finally, before going out and buying an AED, be aware you could save a packet of money by participating in a collaborative purchase scheme I’m setting up. By lots of people getting together to apply “collective purchasing power” the scheme aims to achieve major discounts compared with if you buy just one or two on your own. At time of posting this message I have already received “expressions of interest” for 50 AEDs (and that’s just within the first week since the scheme launched!!). This is certainly focusing the attention of AED suppliers. For details of the scheme go to the following link: http://www.sohsa.co.uk/a...files/defibrillators.pdf Please circulate details of the scheme to anyone you know who you think might benefit. David Osborn