A real lifesaver for county office

Pauls Valley Daily Democrat, Pauls Valley, OK , Mon, 2010-01-11

The potential to save a life when seconds counts is the idea behind a new acquisition at the Garvin County Courthouse.

An automated electronic defibrillator is available for use by staff in the sheriff’s office. The portable device could be a lifesaver in the event anyone in the courthouse had a heart attack or other emergency heart problem.

Garvin County Sheriff Steve Brooks said such equipment has never before been available at the courthouse.

“If one of the inmates, the staff or a visitor to the courthouse has chest pains we can hook this up and it’s there to help,” Brooks said.

“Let’s say an inmate in the jail has a sudden heart attack at 2 in the morning. We can get this hooked up and probably save this person’s life,” he said.

Officials at the sheriff’s office are already trained to perform basic CPR, he said. Falling outside of that training would be an episode causing the heart of someone in the courthouse to stop. That’s where the defibrillator comes into play.

“You never know what might take place. The average response time for an EMT is about 10 minutes. Ten minutes is a lifetime.”

Along with saving precious seconds when a heart-related emergency occurs, Brooks said the device is so simple to use he calls it “idiot proof.”

“You hit the button and it takes care of the rest,” he said. “It has an automatic monitoring system to detect if a heart needs to be shocked.

When the sheriff began considering the idea of getting the defibrillator, he turned to one of his deputies, Josh Keith, who is a certified EMT and trained instructor for the defibrillator.

Early in the process they priced the devices at around $3,000. That eventually came down to about $1,200 allowing the department to purchase one using funds from its share of a seven-year, half-cent county sales tax approved by county voters in 2007.

Brooks said many smaller sheriff’s offices simply don’t have the funding to afford AEDs.

“It’s something all sheriffs say they would love to have but sometimes the cost is simply too much,” he said. “I’ve had some sheriffs tell me they had to choose between an AED or a book-in computer. All sheriff’s departments would love to have an AED.”