Where is my Nearest Defibrillator? Find a Defibrillator Near You
Where is my Nearest Defibrillator? Find a Defibrillator Near You
Cardiac arrest can happen suddenly to anyone at any time. In the UK, there are more than 60,000 cardiac arrests that occur outside of hospital each year. But the survival rate is very low at only one in 10 people.
Emergency services take an average of 11 minutes to get on the scene when they are called for a cardiac arrest. As a result, more and more public access defibrillators have been installed so members of the public can help to increase the chance of survival when cardiac arrest strikes. There are over 10,000 public access defibrillators in the UK ready to support essential, life-saving medical attention when a person goes into cardiac arrest.
A defibrillator should be installed on a wall bracket or inside a special defibrillator cabinet so that it can be identified and accessed quickly. Ensuring members of the public have access to nearby defibrillators anywhere they go gives victims of cardiac arrest the best possible opportunity for survival.
In this article, we’ll cover how to locate a defibrillator in your immediate surroundings, how to find defibrillator AED locations in your area, and how to make your AED easier to find.
How to Find the Nearest Defibrillator Immediately
If you want to help someone that has gone into cardiac arrest you need to find a defibrillator quickly. Once you’ve called 999, starting CPR as soon as you can is very important. If there are other people nearby ask them to help you by looking for the closest defibrillator while you perform CPR.
How and where can you find a defibrillator in an emergency? Here are some ways to find your closest AED:
- Ask the 999 operator ‘where is the closest defibrillator near me?’, they may be able to tell you where the nearest AED is once they know your location.
- You may be close to a defibrillator phone box. If there is a telephone box near you check inside. Telephone boxes often have AEDs installed in them as part of the Community Heartbeat Trust initiative.
- Scan the walls for a defibrillator, they are most commonly installed on a wall bracket or cabinet. This could look similar to a first aid kit. The device could have ‘defibrillator’, ‘AEC’, or ‘cPAD’ written on it.
- If you are close to a shop, restaurant, or other venue ask a member of staff. They may have an AED in the establishment that you can use.
If you’re wondering ‘where's the Nearest Defibrillator?’ remember that more and more businesses and organisations are providing access to defibrillators in public places. You’re likely to find defibrillators in shops, cafes, restaurants, gyms, shopping centres, schools, public transport facilities, bus stops, phone boxes, and many other places.
Be prepared in an emergency. Learn about using a defibrillator in our blog:
Where is the nearest defibrillator in your area?
Knowing where your local defibrillator is is useful just in case an emergency happens, or if you suffer from a condition that puts you at risk of cardiac arrest. There are several ways you can check your area for a defibrillator, or check places that you’re about to visit.
Mapping
Source: https://www.defibfinder.uk/
Community Heartbeat Trust (CHT) has developed an interactive defibrillator map on its website which displays the locations of hundreds of defibrillators in the UK. the organisation is responsible for installing AEDs in telephone boxes. It is a non-profit that works with communities, charities, and businesses to bring defibrillators to public access spaces all across the UK.
Defib Map also have a community of users contributing to a UK-wide AED map that allows people to scroll in and out and navigate a satellite image of the UK to find a defibrillator.
Find an AED with an App
Several defibrillator location apps have been built to make it easier to find an AED quickly on the go. Defib Map’s interactive map has been turned into an app to quickly find an AED and get directions to it from your location.
There are several other ‘nearest defibrillator’ apps that can be downloaded to use on your phone, although each of these is only as thorough as the communities adding to them and will greatly depend on people adding defibrillators to the map. While defibrillator apps are useful in a crisis, remember that the defibrillator nearest to you might not be registered on your particular app.
Protect your business
Bridge the Care Gap with Public Access Trauma Kits
Steroplast, CityCo, and Manchester City Council have distributed 180+ PAcT Kits across Manchester to bridge the critical care gap. In emergencies, these kits provide essential supplies to manage severe bleeding until paramedics arrive. Learn how to equip your venue and ensure you're prepared.
How to Help Others Find Your Defibrillator
The ‘defibrillators in public places’ initiative has led the UK government to deploy public access defibrillator units to numerous spaces where they can be quickly accessed by bystanders to help someone. This included forming a Defibrillator Advisory Committee to implement the project which involved procuring equipment and training individuals in a recommended criteria so that more non-medical people understand how to use a defibrillator, and feel more confident doing so
Not all businesses need to provide access to a defibrillator by law unless their risk assessments reveal the need for one. But following evidence of how public access AEDs have helped save people in cardiac arrest, many businesses have voluntarily installed the devices in an effort to contribute to improved emergency provision.
If you are a business owner, manager, or are responsible for first aid and emergency provisions in a facility, one of the best things you can do is provide access to an AED. One of the other most important things you can do is help people locate it.
Order an AED from our website now. We offer a range of defibrillators which are extremely robust, reliable, easy to use.
Make Your AED Visible and Accessible
Your AED should be installed where it can be easily seen and accessed by anyone. If you can, make sure your AED isn’t behind any locked doors that only certain people can open.
Install your AED on a wall bracket so that it doesn’t end up stored in a cupboard or drawer where no one can find it. Our wall bracket is specially designed for the iPAD SP1 and means the device can be grabbed quickly.
Another way to make your AED visible while keeping it out of harm’s way is to use an indoor defibrillator cabinet.
Printable AED Sign
Download a defibrillator sign you can print out and put next to your device so that people can find it easily.
Register Your Defibrillator
Where are defibrillators and how can we keep track of their locations? It all depends on whether they have been registered. When someone calls 999 to report a cardiac arrest, the operator will be able to see which defibrillators are closest to the site of the emergency on a map.
Many defibrillators go undetected as they haven’t been registered with the emergency services. This means a closer AED could be missed and precious seconds could be lost helping someone in an emergency.
When you buy and install an AED it’s critically important to register it on The Circuit so that it can be seen on various maps and so that emergency call handlers can identify it. The Circuit is a national public defibrillator database, developed by the British Heart Foundation.
Ambulance Control Centres will be able to locate your AED in the event of an emergency and share the nearest defibrillator location with 999 callers.
Where is my Nearest Defibrillator? Find a Defibrillator Near You
In this video, we’ll cover how to locate a defibrillator in your immediate surroundings, how to find defibrillator AED locations in your area, and how to make your AED easier to find.
Visit our
Interactive First Aid Guide
Demystify workplace first aid & find out exactly what your business needs.
Please enter your details into the form below along with any questions or comments and a member of our team will be happy to provide you with more information:
