'Everyone should know CPR': Cork support worker says training helped him save man’s life

A BALLINTEMPLE-based support worker for Enable Ireland has said he would never regret his training in cardio-pulmonary resuscitation after he and his colleague came to the rescue of a man at a bus-stop in Blackrock on Easter Monday.

Martin O’Mahony was out driving with his wife on the bank holiday when she noticed a man collapsed at the bus-stop on the Skehard Road and they turned back to see if they could help.

“I knew straight away that he wasn’t breathing because he was a very dark blue colour, I checked for a pulse and there was nothing, straight away I started to do compressions.

“I was five or six minutes doing compressions, myself and the lady who works with me, Yolandi, she had been driving past as well and she spotted me on the floor.

“We rotated doing the compressions between the two of us.”

The drama was noticed across the road in the Tuath housing complex and one of the residents there came over with a defibrillator which they have on the premises.

“Yolandi put the defib on him and shocked him a few times and we carried on with the compressions until an ambulance crew arrived on the scene. They took over and thankfully after around 10 minutes they managed to get a pulse back.”

The last Martin heard about the man whose life they saved on that Easter Monday was that he had been taken off a ventilator to breathe for himself last week.

“As of now he’s still alive and recovering in hospital,” he added.

While the incident was ongoing, Martin and his colleague were focused on the task in hand but afterwards, he had time to think about what had happened.

“It was only when I got home and sat down that evening did it hit me – what happened there,” said Martin who said that his arms were so sore after the experience that he didn’t go playing a scheduled darts game that evening.

Martin is firmly of the view that people should be trained in using a defibrillator and CPR as they never know when they might be called on to use that training to save a life, perhaps someone who is near and dear to them.

“A million per cent – I couldn’t recommend enough that everyone should know CPR – in my job we get a lot of training in it.

“Sometimes you’re told you have to go and spend two days doing CPR training – I will never complain again about having to do it – that man is still alive because of what I was shown to do.”

Fiona Kerins of Tuath Housing said they had had a fundraising campaign to install the defibrillator on the premises and they also had trained people to use it on the premises.