Portsmouth FC players join university drive to teach everyone in Portsmouth CPR skills

University of Portsmouth paramedic science lead Rob Isherwood, hosted a training session for the players. This included CPR responses, as well as education on the importance of the training, and some of the key survival stats for Portsmouth and the south east.

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This comes ahead of the home match against MK Dons on December 17. On match day there will be a CPR training pop-up in the Fanzone, and players will wear RevivR branded T-shirts to encourage fans to enlist in CPR training.

Manger Danny Cowley said: ‘I thought it was really educational, a fantastic initiative. It’s great for our young players to learn this skill. It’s important, the difference between saving someone’s life can’t be underestimated. We will leave with the skills to now be able to do CPR and use a defibrillator as well.

‘For us, we want to be good citizens and good people and to have this skill in our armoury is obviously really important. We hope we never have to use it, but the nature of our lives is being involved in a league sport. We have seen some high-profile example of players having heart problems and there is a consequence of needing CPR. For us, we live in a country that we are really fortunate that we have so much access to defibrillators but still at the moment our survival rate of people that require CPR is still really low. I think that comes ultimately because of a lack of education, and a lack of confidence for people to be able to use these skills when they matter most, under the most intense pressure. One of the key messages that I took was that, if I can share that message with someone else and educate them then that obviously continue to spread the message to educate the people in this country. I’ll be going home this evening and teaching my children.’

Mr Isherwood said: ‘At the university, we are proud sponsors of the football club. It is how we got involved with the restart a heart project and try and engage the club to try and look at ways to engage with the community around teaching.

‘It is open to everybody, so we really want to engage with everybody in the city of Portsmouth. We know that currently in the south coast of England that the cardiac arrest survival rate is one in 12. We want to change that. We know we can save people if somebody has started the process of CPR before we get there, rather than waiting for us to arrive.

‘I’m from Portsmouth, I’m a Pompey boy and I want my city to be the city to lead the world at out-of-hospital cardiac arrest survival rates. We have one of the highest number of defibs per population of any city in the country so that groundwork has been done. But what we have not got is the training and the confidence of people to use those defibs.

‘We’re working with community groups, schools, we will work with anybody. We will come to you, and do training at the university. Keep an eye out for us.’

For information see bhf.org.uk/how-you-can-help/how-to-save-a-life/how-to-do-cpr/learn-cpr-in-15-minutes