The Excelsior Hotel in Hong Kong got together on May 6 to celebrate the guest’s life they saved a month earlier. Staff involved in the rescue received pins proclaiming, “I helped save someone’s life.”
A retired couple and their two adult children, had just arrived in Hong Kong, their first stop on a month-long Asian vacation. After a day of sightseeing and shopping, they were enjoying a night cap after dinner when the mother collapsed from sudden cardiac arrest. The father called for help, and the hotel’s emergency response team arrived with a resuscitation kit and a Powerheart automated external defibrillator. They attached the AED, which administered two shocks and revived the mother before an ambulance team arrived. The mother was transported to a nearby hospital.
“All the work we put in with emergency response drills and training really paid off,” said Peter Chung, Director of Risk Management of The Excelsior. “The fully automatic AED detected when a shock was required, and informed us of the action to be taken. It was a remarkable event — we saved a life!”
The hotel’s management decided a year earlier to make The Excelsior a heartsafe facility.
Chung added that the Hong Kong Fire Services Department has been urging shopping centers, government offices and public places to have AEDs installed. The goal is to be able to provide defibrillation within the “Golden 5 Minutes,” without having to wait the 10 to 12 minutes it currently requires for an ambulance to arrive.
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May 20th, 2013 at 6:29 am
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