Mr Biedermann, why are you launching this campaign with DELTAgroup?
Our staff in the ServX, BASIC and DELTA personnel divisions work in a wide range of crowded areas – be it events like the Zurich Festival, concerts at the Letzigrund stadium or football matches. The likelihood of a confrontation involving a medical emergency increases in places where lots of people are gathered together. This fact is important to us and serves to inspire our staff to repeatedly check their skills and do all they can to be as best prepared as possible for doing their job.
Why do you focus specifically on cardiac arrest?
Cardiac arrest is obviously number one when it comes to medical emergencies. According to statistics, around 8,000 people a year suffer a cardiac arrest in Switzerland – and not even five percent of them survive it. The emergency services can only reach very few patients within the critical period of three to five minutes following the cardiac arrest. Our staff are often the first uniformed responders on site. Through immediate resuscitation measures in the form of CPR/BLS (basic life support) and the use of a defibrillator (AED), our staff are able to provide support during the vital time before the emergency services arrive and play an important part in the patient’s survival. Our aim is to make them fully aware of this through sound basic training and continual advanced training.
What means will you use to make your employees aware of this issue?
The aim is to launch an extensive information and awareness campaign for the employees in order to shine the spotlight on this issue. To this end, we have selected campaign ambassadors from all our personnel divisions, who are tasked with raising employee awareness of this issue. They will also be present on our social media platforms and communicate our message to the outside world. On our courses for new employees, we actively make participants aware of the campaign and its objectives.
How do you aim to achieve an even better depth of training in the case of BLS-AED?
Part of this campaign involves the certification of the DELTAgroup Academy as an SRC course provider, which involved an external review of our training content. In addition to this, all of the instructors we employ need to complete a 16-hour SRC-compliant training course. Furthermore, we have launched the procurement of state-of-the-art training aids such as AED training equipment and CPR dummies. Our staff and their families therefore benefit from discounted and continually updated BLS-AED training at the DELTAgroup Academy.