Famous five prove they are all heart
Five fantastic Wishaw nurses are helping save lives.
Monday marked national Restart-a-heart Day and the CPR nurses, based at Wishaw General Hospital, were on hand to help deliver an important message.
Team Wishaw ED is made up of staff nurses Caroline Jamieson, Fiona Mcpherson and Laura Gillies, charge nurses Fiona Torrance and Michelle Graham.
The women started their project in April and are touring primary schools to train children in CPR.
So far they’ve spoken to more than 1600 youngsters and have another 10 schools lined up for a visit.
And this month the team was delighted to find out they are finalists in the Community First Aid Champion category in the St Andrew’s Scottish First Aid Awards, which will be announced next month.
Mum- of- two Caroline, from Wishaw, said: “We had all talked for a while about the idea of spending some of our free time teaching CPR to primary school children.
“We found out about the organisation Save a Life for Scotland, which teaches people CPR. They helped us to set up and gave us training videos suitable for children. The kids love it when we go into the schools.
“We make it exciting for them – it’s not at all scary.
“The primary one to three children practise the chest compressions on their teddies or other favourite soft toys. The older children use a CPR dummy.
“Of course, the little ones probably won’t have the strength to do CPR in a real situation but they are learning the skill for when they get older and can tell their parents about it.
“We also teach them other crucial information about things they can do in emergency situations, such as calling 999 and clearly explaining their location.
“Many of the older pupils would hopefully be able to carry out the chest compressions effectively.
“We get a lot of satisfaction from volunteering to do this work and we hope to carry out the training in as many primary schools across Lanarkshire as possible.”
Team Wishaw ED can be contacted through their Twitter feed @TeamWishawED or by email at TeamWishawED@yahoo.com.