Posted By Zyggy Turek
Mike,

There is no doubt that they can save lives in the hands of capable & trained persons.

However, this must be put into context of how many people you employ & the likelihood of it ever being used.

We purchased one some 7 years ago following "political" pressure & decided to place it in a location which attracts over 100k people per year.

Following advice from the manufacturers; ambulance service and our insurers, the AED could only be used by registered First Aiders who had additional training, which then had to be refreshed after 9 months (the advice on this period varies with different organisations).

We then had to ensure that the AED could not be used by an "unauthorised" person.

In that time it has been used twice & unfortunately could not prevent a loss of life.

We tried to get funding from the BHF, but were advised that they would only support organisations that had large volumes of people passing through, e.g. airports, etc.

Posted By David Bannister
Hi Mike, there have been some very interesting threads on the subject in the past with a range of opinions being expressed. If you search using the "search forums" link to the right you should be able to find several that may go some way to answering your question.