Housekeeping supervisor Byron Hinson says first aid at work training contributed to a life-saving intervention when a jogger collapsed while running near the River Cam last month.

Byron was driving along Fen Road when he saw a man collapsed on the pavement suspected to have experienced a cardiac arrest, with a woman performing CPR and another on the telephone to the emergency services. He stopped to offer assistance, as another passer-by arrived with a defibrillator which had been situated nearby. 

Byron downplays his role in what happened next, but he noticed that the man, who was in his early 30s, was not breathing, despite others believing the patient was breathing. Byron next calmly offered advice and direction on what to do.

“I could tell he wasn’t breathing from first aid courses I’ve done at work,” says Byron, who has worked at Gonville & Caius College for 22 years. “It was agonal breathing (gasping for air when a person has insufficient oxygen). It looked like he was doing that for quite some time.

“I started giving some advice. At that moment someone had managed to get a defibrillator from close by, which was very lucky.

“I held a mask to try to get oxygen into him and encouraged everyone to keep going with the chest compressions and to follow the advice of the defibrillator, which tells you what to do.

“It checked him over and he needed shocking, so it did that – and I reminded everyone to keep themselves clear when the defibrillator was scanning and shocking.

“I could then see he had started to breathe. The other people did most of the work – I just gave some advice.”

The relief of that moment coincided with the arrival of an ambulance, and soon afterwards, after the passers-by were asked to move on by paramedics, the air ambulance landed in Stourbridge Common. Byron was also relieved the man was on Fen Road, rather than further along the tow path popular with runners.

Subsequently, Byron discovered via a Facebook group and contact with the patient’s friend and partner that they had recovered and have been released from hospital.

“If I hadn’t been trained, then I wouldn’t have been a great deal of help,” Byron says.

“And if it hadn’t been for the defibrillator, which everyone gets trained on here, I don’t think he would have survived.”