Basin Recreation’s Trailside Park is now better equipped to respond to an emergency that involves sudden cardiac arrest.
On Tuesday, July 30, Basin Recreation received a donation of four automated external defibrillators (AEDs) from the Play Well Play Safe Foundation.
The advanced AEDs are small, portable devices that can diagnose and provide defibrillation to an individual undergoing cardiac arrest.
The donation came about when Brian Hanton, Parks & Recreation Manager at Basin Recreation met John Flint of Play Well Play Safe and heard of the foundation’s attempts to place AEDs at schools in Salt Lake City. Hanton suggested that Summit County’s public parks could be a good place to place the medical devices and that Basin Recreation might be interested in purchasing a couple AEDs. Play Well Play Safe responded by fully donating four of the AEDs.
“With the activities going on in the park you never know what’s going to happen,” Hanton said. “So having that extra security measure is always a benefit to have as long as we can get our people educated on how to use it, comfortable to use it, find a place where it won’t get stolen.”
The logistics question is one that Basin Recreation is still grappling with: where to place the AEDs so that they are readily available in an emergency, and yet secure so they do not have to worry about them being stolen or vandalized.
The AEDs are tools that Basin Recreation hopes it rarely, if ever, will need to use. Asked whether Basin Recreation has had an recent incidents where an AED would have been helpful, Hanton said “Fortunately here we haven’t had that yet. I think last summer there was an incident with a youth player I can’t remember the sport that had some issues that, if he would have had the AED he would have been saved.”
“There was an instance last year at Utah State University,” said Play Well Play Safe Executive Director Todd Hageman, “where there was a player that collapsed on the court and there was an AED that saved his life.”
The AED donation was Play Well Play Safe’s first to Basin Recreation. The foundation is currently focused on educational programs (such as instructing students on how to use AEDs in an emergency) and scholarships for local athletes to help pay for interscholastic sports.