Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:45 pm on 7 February 2017.
Diolch, Lywydd. Thank you very much for your statement today, and for the information that you’ve given us. I certainly appreciate that. One of the things I wanted to ask you about was one of the key actions in the heart conditions delivery plan, namely the plan to have an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest plan for Wales—something I’d certainly welcome. Now, that plan would ensure that there are clear pathways for patient management following the return of spontaneous circulation, and I believe you can plan for that. What’s more difficult to plan for is the losing of spontaneous circulation in the first place.
Without pre-empting tomorrow’s debate, I think you could consider more defibrillators, and a whole-population-level training to give the confidence on how to use the equipment, how to practice and update it, because it does need to be updated—wider cardiopulmonary resuscitation techniques. All these things could actually be step 1 of your out-of-hospital cardiac action plan. If you agree with that, I’m just wondering whether you think the way of creating that first step would be by adopting a rights and responsibilities approach, rather than relying on the kind of activity that you mentioned in the statement that you put out in December—showing a huge and very, very welcome rise in interest and activity on the issue of emergency lifesaving skills, but which actually seems to bring no certainty of longevity or, indeed, reaching the entire population, which is what would have been needed in order to manage the unmanageable, which is the sporadic and random nature of people having heart attacks outside of the hospital setting. Thank you.