Defib-you-later: Number of Automated External Defibrillators Unimpressive

“Quick! Someone run across campus, grab one of the two defibrillators and run it back here before it’s too late!”

Automated External Defibrillators (AEDs) are crucial to successful intervention for cardiac arrest. If you have a heart attack and no one has a defibrillator, you will most likely die. AEDs can be used by anyone, regardless of their medical training or prior knowledge, because they have simple, easy to follow, step-by-step instructions. They’re so easy to use, you can even use one on yourself if you’re still conscious and have some means of measuring your vital signs.

As of 2010, almost every NESCAC school has, or is at least in the process of acquiring, at least five AEDs, and most have planned to increase their stock in coming years.  There is but one exception to that trend within the NESCAC, and as you may have guessed—it’s us!

Connecticut College, as our motto tells us explicitly, is “like a tree planted by rivers of water” completely removed from the plethora of necessities provided by modern society, not the least of which includes access to sophisticated emergency medical attention. At both the symbolic and the practical level, there seems to be little attention devoted to rational thought, and while I’m not surprised to see this in a college run by — or is it merely for? — liberal idealists, my lack of surprise does not imply a lack of disgust with the situation.

For a campus of 1,900 students, 177 full-time faculty, hundreds of staff, thousands of visitors and anyone else I may have forgotten to mention that comprises that endless stock of human automata I run into throughout the day, two defibrillators is not enough.  Just what are we supposed to do if three people have heart attacks at the same time?  It’s possible—unlikely, but possible.

Robin Edwards, the young woman leading the initiative to get this basic safety need addressed, provided me with some useful statistics. If you have a heart attack and someone intervenes with the assistance of an AED within one minute, then you have a 90% chance of survival. If you’re being helped by a group of your typical incompetent Americans, which means that people are being clumsy, are taking their time setting it up, or they have to find, and then read, the instructions, figure out what to do, introspectively debate as to whether it’s even okay for them to provide help in the first place, blah blah blah… Basically, if it takes three or four minutes, then your chances drop to 70% (with, I would presume, a significant chance of brain damage when you wake up).  If they are—as Americans so notably are—SO disorganized, that help doesn’t arrive within ten minutes, then sorry bro, but you’ve got a 2% chance of surviving.

Now, the upside of putting an AED in every building is that it avoids these dangers, maximizing the probability of immediate intervention and therefore increasing the chances of survival for anyone who may have a heart attack after either binge drinking or eating the oh-so-healthy food we all eat here in America, New England and at Conn. The only real downside, of course, would be that it would cost a lot of money to put them there, which our $54,970 tuition couldn’t possibly begin to cover. If my superficial research into the cost of these machines is in any way reflective of reality, there is no reason our decadent campus shouldn’t be able to afford it.  “Depending on the unit, an AED [would] cost approximately $1000 – $2500[,]” says wiki.answers.com.  It really wouldn’t be that expensive.

If we acquired sixty-three defibrillators, one for each building on campus, it would cost, at most, $157,500. Our latest tuition fee is $54,970. By my calculations, then, 1.15 to 2.86 Connecticut College tuitions could cover the cost of buying an AED for each building. Of course it costs a little bit more to install them, but negotiating a lower price for buying a huge order is not an uncommon practice, and Zoll (or whomever else we choose as our supplier) I’m sure would be ecstatic to move such a large stock of inventory. In the end, our costs may even be cheaper than I predicted.

The requests of Robin Edwards and those with whom she is working to push our administration to acquire these much needed AEDs, are far more reasonable than my own. They want to put one in Harkness, one in Cro, and one in Harris. This, according to them, will increase the probability of intervention within the typical four minute American time frame. But being that Conn is Conn, I suppose we’ll just have to wait until someone actually dies from a heart attack before the people in charge decide to do anything. •