Herefordshire Heartstart is a voluntary organisation, established in 1996, to teach the people of Herefordshire Emergency Life Support (ELS) skills. These skills are the actions needed to help keep someone alive until professional help arrives.

We are a team of trained volunteer instructors and helpers.  To date we have trained over 22,000 people of all ages and backgrounds. Thousands more schoolchildren have also benefited through our schools project.

Our aim is to save lives in the community by strengthening the chain of survival.  When someone suffers a cardiac arrest, their life may depend on a bystander who has learnt ELS skills. The trained person can recognise what has happened, call for professional help and perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), to buy the casualty time.

On the course you will learn vital lifesaving skills which could help to keep a person alive until professional help  arrives.

The course includes:-

· How to call for help

· How to help someone who is unconscious and put them into the recovery position

· How to perform CPR (cardiopulmonary  resuscitation—chest compressions and rescue breathing)

· How to recognise the signs and symptoms of a heart attack

· How to deal with choking

· How to deal with serious bleeding