St Mary's College has become heart safe thanks to a generous donation

The Hospital selected ‘Hand on Heart’ as their chosen charity for 2013 because of its simple goal: to prevent the deaths of the 12 young people who die each week due to a sudden cardiac arrest

The hospital initially pledged to provide a defibrillator and training to three local schools including St Mary’s College, Blackburn.

The Preston-based hospital has funded a Gold Defibrillator Package for us which means the College has received not only a life-saving defibrillator, but also training for 8 members of staff in the use of an AED (Automated External Defibrillator) and basic life support training for 30 students which will be a skill that will benefit them throughout their lives.

On Tuesday 11th February, staff and students from our Health and Social Care department met with General Manager Debbie Craven at Fulwood Hall Hospital and were officially presented with our defibrillator.

Debbie stated how proud she was to donate this valuable piece of life saving equipment to each school and acknowledged the hard work and dedication shown by the staff during the year which enabled them to achieve this.

Adele Aspinwall, teacher at St Mary’s says, “Getting a defibrillator was high on our priority for this year and we were about to start fundraising, but then we were amazed and very grateful that Fulwood chose us out of all the local schools and colleges, to donate one to us.”

The Hand on Heart charity is committed to reducing the number of deaths of young people due to sudden cardiac arrest. Since January 2011 Hand on Heart has placed over 200 fully and partially funded defibrillator packages, (an Automated External Defibrillator (AED), CPR training for staff and pupils and training accessories) to schools across the UK.