Management6 min read
Organisation5 min readAndi Arapi
Who is responsible for an installed defibrillator
Buying an AED is an afternoon’s decision. Keeping it ready is a commitment that lasts as long as the device, and it has to be assigned to a person with a name.
A person, not a department
The first step isn’t technical: it’s writing down who the device’s named contact is. Not “management”, not “maintenance”: a person, with a deputy for when they’re away.
The reason is practical before it’s formal. An AED’s deadlines arrive years apart: in between, suppliers change, the office moves, someone retires. A task assigned to a generic role survives the first reorganisation only by accident.
Written traces are for whoever holds them
A check that wasn’t logged, from the point of view of anyone who has to verify it later, never happened. That isn’t a technicality: it’s the only way for someone other than you, months later, to know whether that cabinet was looked at.
The form matters little — a notebook hanging next to the cabinet works. What matters is that it holds date, who, what they saw. And that someone reads that log before a date expires, not after.
Data
What a log entry should contain
The fields ordered by how often they’re missing from the logs we’ve seen.
- Date of the checkalmost always there
It’s the only field nobody forgets, because it’s the one you write first.
- Who did itoften missing
With no name, months later there’s nobody to ask what they saw.
- State of the indicatoroften missing
“Checked” says nothing. “Green light, cabinet intact, pads sealed” does.
- Expiry dates read off the labelalmost never
It’s the field that turns a check into a forecast: without it, you find out about the expiry on the day it has passed.
Not a statistic: a checklist sorted by how easily each item is forgotten.
The minimum that holds
If all of this feels like a lot, here’s the short version. Four things, and they fit in half a day of work, once.
- A named contact with a first name, a surname and a deputy.
- A list of the devices with the two dates that matter: pads and battery.
- A reminder that fires a few weeks before each deadline, not on the day.
- A check log, on paper if you like, with date and signature.
When a system is worth it
With one device, a sheet is enough. With five sites and twelve devices, the sheet becomes the problem: nobody opens it, and the dates that matter are always somebody else’s.
The threshold, in our experience, sits around three devices or two sites. Below that, a calendar reminder holds. Above it, you need something that warns you by itself — because the point isn’t having the dates, it’s being warned while there’s still time to do something.
Takeaways
- Responsibility for an AED belongs to a person with a name, not to a department.
- For anyone who comes after, an unlogged check never happened.
- Above three devices or two sites, a spreadsheet stops warning you in time.
Keep reading
Risks7 min read
The ways an AED stops being useful
The same deadlines, but with someone reminding you
SOS DAE Management keeps devices, sites, deadlines and documents in one place, and warns you before a date passes.