- May 2, 2024
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Lauren Ramirez is passionate about AEDs in schools — not just because she is the owner of Salus Medical Training, which provides training and certifications and also sells and maintains automated external defibrillators. She’s also passionate because she has children in Flagler Schools, and she is the PTO president at Belle Terre Elementary School.
AEDs are portable devices that analyze a person’s heart rhythm and can send an electric shock to the heart to restore a normal rhythm in cases of sudden cardiac arrest.
About a year ago, Ramirez reached out to the school district to find out how many AEDs were in the schools and who maintains them.
She is now partnering with the district in helping them add more AEDs to schools, inspecting the ones the district have and adopting the AED365 maintenance program that enables monthly scans to check the status of each of the AED’s battery and pads.
“There are stickers on each machine with a QR code that will tell you about the machine,” Ramirez said. “Every month every single AED will get checked and that’s going to happen forever. So now we’ll never have a dead battery or expired pads. Every AED for all of our schools will be ready to rescue all of the time.”
Kory Bush, Flagler Schools’ director of Plant Services, said the district has recently purchased 15 AEDs to make sure all of the elementary schools have four on campus, and the middle schools have four plus a travel AED. The high schools need more to cover their larger campuses and they require more travel AEDs.
“We have been really looking at our AED procedures,” Superintendent LaShakia Moore said, “making sure that we have the proper number across our schools, and making sure that we have great procedures in place that will assess those machines on a monthly basis to make sure that they're in full function and compliance.”
Ideally, an AED needs to be no more than a minute and a half away from every activity, so it can be retrieved and utilized within three minutes of an emergency, Ramirez said. The AEDs need to be accessible to anybody in case an event is going on, Bush said.
“They're not behind locked doors,” he said. “We're trying to keep them in specific areas so that staff know where they are. The cafeteria, outside the nurse's station, the gym and the fourth one is strategically placed for coverage on the campuses.”
The district purchased Zoll AED 3 machines, which have pads that don’t have to be changed out for adults and children.
“They work for infants, children and adults, and they are dummy proof,” Ramirez said. “They are color coordinated, and there is a video on the machine that guides you through. And the pads last for five years.”
When the pads do expire the district will only have to buy one set instead of separate sets for children and adults.
The district is making sure the two high schools have enough travel AEDs, Moore said.
We want to make sure that when our students travel for athletics, that we don't have to rely on the other school district being in compliance. We're going to make sure we have an AED with us in the event that an emergency happens.”
— LASHAKIA MOORE, Flagler Schools superintendent
“We want to make sure that when our students travel for athletics, that we don't have to rely on the other school district being in compliance,” she said. “We're going to make sure we have an AED with us in the event that an emergency happens.”
Matanzas currently has 11 AEDs. Flagler Palm Coast has seven wall-mounted AEDs inside the school and at other areas of the campus. AdventHealth recently purchased three additional travel units for the school, athletic trainer Ron Steinwehr said. The Flagler County Education Foundation funded two new AEDs for the school at the beginning of the school year. Steinwehr said he keeps an AED with him as he goes around to the schools’ different athletic venues.
Ramirez has been working with Plant Services zone supervisors Clint Chinn and Ray Jones in deploying the AEDs, Bush said.
“We’re getting them all out and the ones mounted in the boxes and put in the spots that we want to have them in and (Chinn and Jones) oversee the guys making sure that they do their monthly inspections,” Bush said.
“Lauren has done an excellent job helping us roll this out,” Bush said. “She's done a lot of legwork, working with AED365, so that they put all that information in the system for us. We were using another company, but someone local is always preferable.”
Bush said the district is still in phase one of the upgrade. In July, they plan to purchase 12 to 14 more AEDs to replace older ones.
“This initiative is not just about installing equipment,” Ramirez said. “It's about creating a safer environment for our children and educational staff. It's about the peace of mind for parents knowing that the schools their children attend are prepared to handle cardiac emergencies.”
