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People Power
Cardiac care on the job
Chris Brunker, a Leduc firefighter and paramedic, moonlights as a dealer and trainer in an item made to order for over-stressed energy and stock markets – portable shock treatment for on-the-job cardiac arrest.
“We’re all workaholics,” Brunker says. “We’re all in high-stress jobs.”
As an agent for Heart Zap Services Inc., he deals in a briefcase-sized device billed as “a full-rescue AED” or automated external defibrillator.
The equipment goes beyond batteries, wires and paddles that administer electric jolts to workers whose over-strained hearts fall out of rhythm into potentially lethal racing patterns. In fact, only about half of victims need the full shock treatment. The portable heart attack aid package also has sensors, metronomes and recorded voices that guide applications of CPR or cardiopulmonary resuscitation.
“There is a big call for this,” says Brunker. His firm sold more than 2,000 of the devices across Canada at a price of about $2,000 apiece this year. Alberta’s around-the-clock, roller-coaster energy industry stands out as a prime market. Training in CPR and defibrillators has become a standard part of first aid courses required by provincial occupational health and safety authorities across the country, he reports.
The need for emergency cardiac care outside hospitals is well-documented. Brunker has seen it up close and personal in nearly a quarter-century as a paramedic, including 15 years in his native England and eight years in his new industrial hometown south of Edmonton.
He cites tragedies affecting all walks of life. Cases range from athletes in their 20s with undetected genetic susceptibilities to middle-aged workers overtaken by decades of bad lifestyles involving hard work, long hours, tobacco, caffeine, alcohol, fatty foods and worry.
The heart emergency machines still mostly go to arenas where work has a strong physical dimension such as drilling rigs and refineries, Brunker reports. But offices are starting to buy the equipment and it will spread, he predicts. “It’s not required yet. But it will be.”
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