THE ambulance service covering Oxfordshire won an award for a campaign to increase awareness of defibrillators and cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR).

South Central Ambulance’s Saving Lives was named best healthcare campaign at the CIPR PRide Awards 2022 in the Anglia, Thames and Chiltern region.

The campaign set out to improve take-up rates of CPR and defibrillator usage and raise funds for volunteers training and equipment.

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SCAS became the first in the country to roll out LUCAS 3, a device which can perform CPR on a patient automatically to free up paramedics to carry out other vital interventions.

There were 2,294 occasions during the year where CPR was in progress before the arrival of an ambulance across Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Berkshire, and Hampshire.

Nicola Dunbar, head of community engagement and training at SCAS, said: "The dedication and the commitment from our communications department, charity and community training and engagement team in working together to raise the profile of CPR and defibrillators, funding advances in equipment and care and training members of the public has been vital in helping to improve out of hospital cardiac arrest survival rates in the SCAS region.

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"The variety of activities over the course of this year have demonstrated the benefits of this relationship, achieving media and social media impact, raising funds and training thousands of members of the public in vital life-saving skills."

Gillian Hodgetts, director of communications, marketing and engagement at SCAS, said: “We are all thrilled to win this prestigious award and more importantly for an aspect of our work that we are passionate about and that has the potential to help save many lives”.

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This story was written by Anna Colivicchi, she joined the team this year and covers health stories for the Oxfordshire papers. 

Get in touch with her by emailing: Anna.colivicchi@newsquest.co.uk

Follow her on Twitter @AnnaColivicchi