Cohousing-L Mailing List: Defibrillator in the Common House

[Thomas Lofft (tlofft]

Karolyn Mangeot wrote:
We have a proposal to buy a fully automatic defibrillator Zoll AED Plus for
    our common house.  Questions:
    1.  Does any community currently have a defibrillator?
    2.  Are there liability insurance issues we need to consider?
    3.  How do you deal with people who have a Do Not Resuscitate order?
    4.  Anything else we should know?
    Thanks!
    Karolyn Mangeot
    Elderberry Cohousing

>From Liberty Village, MD, Maryland's 1st Cohousing Community since 1998:
Our Top Dog Cohousing Burning Soul, Merlin Porter-Borden, was hit here in the 
community with a heart attack in 2004. The 911 team came from 1 mile away at 
the VFD but could not resuscitate him and we lost him at about age 66, way too 
soon.

Within the next year, we opted to get an AED on site and have periodic 
refresher training. One of our experienced RN members has taken personal charge 
of seeing that we conduct occasional training, get pads and batteries refreshed 
as needed, and put it in the community budget when needed.

Very fortunately, we have never needed to use it in the last 14 years, but life 
is what happens when we're busy making other plans.

It sits on the wall near the Common House entry and everyone? (Well, lots of 
us) know where it is, but admittedly, I do not believe we include this critical 
information in orientation to new members like new tenants in rentals. 
Periodically - (maybe not often enough, but our meeting agenda is always backed 
up) - we have a refresher demo to remind us how to use it, and instructions are 
attached to it, and one of our resident RN's is responsible for keeping it 
serviced.

We would respect the wishes of DNR members, however that info is not commonly 
available.
We have been considering encouraging members to submit personal info to a 
community registry, and have initiated an Aging In Community team but the 
registry so far as I know is still inactive, so in the unlikely event that they 
collapsed in the CH, I agree with others, we would probably act first and check 
later.

If anyone has an attack elsewhere in the community, the AED can be taken to the 
victim and used directly. It is automated and gives vocal automated 
instructions which are easy to follow if the attendant is listening instead of 
panicking.
Tom Lofft
Liberty Village, MD, Maryland's 1st Cohousing Community since 1998