Prague’s Academy of Performing Arts fits its premises with automated external defibrillators (AED)

The Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (AMU) has just equipped its premises with automated external defibrillators (AED), actively fulfilling the Third Mission of the Universities that it both subscribes to and pursues through its sustained activities across society. All AMU employees who were interested have already taken a first aid course. Titled ‘Four Hours for Life’, the course was organised along with the District Office of the Red Cross in Prague 1; more recently, the employees took training in operating the AED. AMU is now ready to address extreme life-threatening situations, although it hopes they will never have to be tackled.

An automated external defibrillator was installed at AMU’s Film and TV School in 2019. Six more AEDs were purchased recently and will be available at the campus that comprises the Rectorate and the Music and Dance Faculty in Malostranské Square, at the Theatre Faculty, the FAMU Studio, the Hradební Hall of Residence, the AMU Educational and Training Centre in Poněšice, and the Beroun facility. All of AMU’s defibrillators will be registered in the Záchranka medical emergency application (https://www.zachrankaapp.cz/), which is connected with the Prague Medical Emergency Service https://www.zzshmp.cz/mapa-aed/.

“In addition to art education and research, AMU’s mission includes maintaining open and responsible contact with society. This concept involves, among other things, the eminently important training and readiness for addressing extreme and, hopefully, extremely rare situations when a person’s life is at stake. We are happy that AMU will become a modern and enlightened workplace in this sense,” Rector of AMU Ingeborg Radok Žádná comments on procuring the AEDs.

An automated external defibrillator is equipment intended for resuscitation delivered by lay person responders. It administers an electric shock to the heart in the event of cardiac arrest. AEDs are capable of determining automatically whether defibrillation should or should not be indicated. It guides the lay responder by giving them instructions spoken aloud.