A City of London Police Officer is training people how to save lives

19 February 2024

A City of London Police officer has been training colleagues and members of the public in lifesaving skills as defibrillators become more and more commonplace.

Medic instructor PC David Jarvis has trained around 150 people, including officers, police staff, football coaches and parents on what they should do if they find themselves needing to deliver first aid.

PC Jarvis – on the Tactical Firearms Group as the Protection Coordinator - started out as one of the medic instructors for the force, before setting up the pre-hospital trauma care team following the London Bridge attacks in 2017.

Then, after footballer Christian Eriksen had the cardiac arrest on the pitch in 2021, PC Jarvis started to train parents and coaches at his son’s football team, which had ordered two defibrillators following the incident. This led to him offering more training locally, which he said he is happy to do.

PC Jarvis said: “The training only takes about an hour and a half, but when Christian Erikson had his cardiac arrest, as much as it was amazing to see and to deal with, [you see that defibrillators] are not that hard to deal with, with a little bit of training.

“They’re more and more defibs. They’re at sports halls, they appear anywhere. I’m never going to use one… well now you might use one. In the village where I live there’s one there… You might end up coming across one. If you call for an ambulance, make sure you ask, ‘Where’s my local defib?’, because you might be able to send someone to go and get.”

“If you know how a defib works and you know how to make a phone call, you’re pretty much there. But it’s more the confidence of using it, so I tell people to beware that it’s not going to look nice. But if you can use a defib without panicking, you’re halfway there.”