Restart a Heart Day raises awareness about cardiac arrest and helps people to learn CPR, giving them lifesaving skills and the confidence to use them.
The Restart a Hart Day in associaton with the British Heart Foundation consists of three Lifesaving skills:
• CPR
• Recovery position
• Management of choking
Each of these skills are taught using an explanation at the beginning, a practical demonstration and a chance for attendees to practice at the end.
This follows the accredited British Heart Foundation Heartstart programme.
Restart a Heart Day 2023 will be taking place in Cambridge Central Mosque (as well as in various locations across the UK) on Wednesday 11th October 2023 at 2pm.
Please book 1 ticket for each named person attending.
From Resuscitation Officer Dan, Cambridge University Hospitals:
‘Restart a Heart Day’ raises awareness about cardiac arrest and helps people to learn CPR, providing lifesaving skills and the confidence to use them. In preparation for ‘Restart a Heart Day’ the British Heart Foundation are providing CPR training at Cambridge Central Mosque. As a team we discussed the potential ethical dilemmas we may face as professionals when resuscitating a person of Muslim faith. Resuscitation is often undignified in its nature – patients may be exposed to apply defibrillator pads/monitoring. Our concern was that because of this potential undignified exposure, a lay person bystander may withhold CPR for fear of “doing the wrong thing” and disrespecting religious values.
As healthcare professionals our aim is always to “do the right thing”, and we appreciate that certain aspects of the care we provide must be amended to meet the individual needs of each patient we meet – this includes respecting religious values. Our collective experience was, that in the event of cardiac arrest, our actions would remain the same regardless of religious background. Nonetheless, we felt that we required confirmation to ensure best practice.
To seek clarity and ensure our practice met the needs of the patients in our care, I met with Sejad Mekic, Head Imam at Cambridge Central Mosque. His guidance was invaluable and is summarised below. “We all have a duty to preserve the sanctity of life.” The act of saving a life is a priority as emphasised in the Qur’an, chapter 5 verse 32: “Who so saves the life of one, it shall be as if he had saved the life of all mankind.” where God mentions that saving a life is an obligation for everyone including one’s own life and the life of others.
Muslim scholars state that all medical personnel have specialist knowledge and skills and therefore ‘professional licence’ to provide care to anyone, regardless of age or gender. Consequently medical professionals are therefore permitted to provide any level of care (inclusive of CPR), to any person, in any way, in order to preserve the sanctity of life.
The Qur’an describes the moral duty that we all have to preserve the sanctity of life. However, attempts to save the life of another must not risk injury to you or anyone else. Actions taken to save a life must be within the limit of individual ability and not risk additional unnecessary harm, injury, pain or discomfort to the person being saved.
In the event of out of hospital cardiac arrests, provision of bystander CPR is proven to improve patient outcomes. As described above, actions to save a life must be ‘within the limit of individual ability’. The assumption may be that without training, CPR should not be provided (as an incorrect technique may cause additional unnecessary harm, injury, pain or discomfort) however, Muslim Scholars would agree that in the event of cardiac arrest (when a person is essentially dead) it is better to attempt to perform CPR, even if it is not of high-quality, than do nothing at all.
We still have availability for training at the Cambridge Central Mosque. This is an incredible opportunity to not only learn lifesaving skills, but to do this in the beautiful, peaceful surroundings of the mosque. I cannot recommend a visit enough. We have also added additional dates for sessions at the Deakin Centre onsite for non-clinical staff.