The Lloyd Morrison Foundation Report

Since 2015, The Lloyd Morrison Foundation have been our Cornerstone Partner Donor and their support and ongoing commitment continues to have a huge impact across our region. This year, The Lloyd Morrison Foundation’s annual donation of $500,000 once again funded a new fully-kitted, state-of-the-art emergency ambulance, our Heartbeat programme and many public AED’s across our region including the cost of their maintenance. This support enables Wellington Free Ambulance to provide free CPR training to businesses, schools and community groups throughout our region to ensure as many people as possible are trained to help save a life. There are an average of six out-of-hospital cardiac arrests every week across our region, and for every minute without CPR a person’s chance of survival falls by 10-15%. Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, cardiac arrest survival rates have been declining as lockdowns meant there were fewer bystanders present who had CPR knowledge. Our changing world means it has become even more important to increase public knowledge of CPR and how to use an AED.

Our goal is to train everyone in our community in how to perform CPR and use an AED, and for these lifesaving skills to remain with them for the rest of their lives. We thank Julie Nevett and The Lloyd Morrison Foundation for their generosity and continued support of this important work. Our COVID response and the lockdowns in Wellington meant that for three months of this year The Lloyd Morrison Foundation Heartbeat programme was paused while our Senior Heartbeat Coordinator was recalled to the frontline. Despite this, we still trained over a thousand people in life-saving CPR skills this year. In October 2021, our programme resumed and booking numbers have been high ever since. The overall impact of The Lloyd Morrison Foundation’s generosity is that lives are saved, and we cannot thank them enough for their support.

Number of courses provided: 60 Number of people trained: 1,001 Ages of people trained:

Number of AEDs installed in the community: 30

This included 6 schools (117 students), 39 business groups, 9 community groups, 6 sports clubs and 2 private bookings. “The Lloyd Morrison Foundation Heartbeat programme makes CPR so easy to learn, and anyone and everyone can do it. We often train groups where people think they are just coming to ‘watch’ and they end up giving it a go.” Rachel Evans, Senior Heartbeat Coordinator

“Thanks very much for a really great CPR course…I have attended many, many courses during my career and I think yours is up there with the best of them.” Royal Wellington Golf Club “I’ve done several First Aid / CPR courses over the years, and this is by far the best.” Eastbourne Menzshed

“I’ve had previous CPR training that left me feeling overwhelmed, but I had a completely different experience with this programme. It’s the first time I have left a course feeling like I could do what’s needed to save a life.” Chaffers Dock Apartments

PATIENT STORY

Craig Nelson works at Mitre 10 in Petone. His role is very physical, and he usually walks over 20,000 steps a day around the store. He has always considered himself a fit and healthy person. One morning he was at work when, out of the blue with no obvious warning signs, he suffered a sudden cardiac arrest. Andrew Bell, the store’s Operations Manager, remembers getting a phone call from a colleague to tell him that Craig had collapsed. Thankfully, Andrew has done first aid training every two years for the last 25 years and that day his instincts and his training kicked in immediately. Before he started CPR, the first thing Andrew did was tell his colleagues to ring for an ambulance and get the AED (automatic external defibrillator) which is located just outside their building. Earlier this year, The Lloyd Morrison Foundation AED had been installed by our Senior Heartbeat co-ordinator ensuring it was located in an easy to access and visible public location. As well as Andrew starting CPR virtually straight away on Craig, the other factor that helped save his life was early use of an AED. When Mitre 10 purchased their AED from Wellington Free Ambulance, they made the decision to locate it on the outside of their building, making it available to the whole community as well as to their staff and their customers. “It was amazing how everything just kicked in and I knew exactly what to do,” recalls Andrew. “The training really does work. That’s what surprised me the most,” says Andrew. “I’d recommend everyone does CPR training, as you just don’t know when you might need it.”