Big Thanks to Survivors of Bystander CPR for Supporting Life-saving Ambulance Service Campaign

Yorkshire Ambulance Service has thanked cardiac arrest patients whose lives have been saved by Good Samaritans for supporting a campaign to encourage people to learn cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR).

Dozens of people who are alive today because someone successfully performed the simple life-saving procedure on them threw their weight behind the #CPRSavedMyLife campaign on social media.

They all posted #CPRSavedMyLife selfies on Twitter and Facebook which secured some of the best social media engagement YAS has ever seen for its posts.

Jason Carlyon, Resuscitation Manager with Yorkshire Ambulance Service, said: “The campaign illustrated that cardiac arrests can affect anyone of any age and we wanted to use some powerful imagery to encourage members of the public to learn CPR so they have the skills to save the life of a loved one of stranger in an emergency.”

The #CPRSavedMyLife campaign was held as part of preparations for Restart a Heart Day on Tuesday 18 October 2016 when Yorkshire Ambulance Service staff and volunteers taught CPR to 20,000 youngsters at 105 schools across the county.

The event was held with support from the Resuscitation Council (UK), British Heart Foundation, St John Ambulance and other partner agencies. For the first time, YAS was joined by all ambulance trusts in the UK which held mass CPR training events to mark Restart a Heart Day and resulted in over 150,000 people learning the skill nationwide.

Over 30,000 people suffer cardiac arrests outside of hospital in the UK every year. If this happens in front of a bystander who starts CPR immediately before the arrival of the ambulance, the patient’s chances of survival double.