IN SHORT

Heart of the Nation is running a free one-hour CPR and AED awareness session at Griffith City Library on Thursday 26 March 2026, starting at 5.30pm and finishing at 7pm. Volunteer community trainers will guide attendees through hands-on CPR practice and the use of an automated external defibrillator, with no prior experience or medical knowledge required. Registration is free and available now, with attendees asked to complete a short pre-session questionnaire so trainers can tailor the session to the group.

In a cardiac emergency, the minutes between collapse and the arrival of a paramedic are the minutes that determine whether someone lives or dies. For communities in the Riverina and across the western regions of New South Wales, where ambulance response times can stretch well beyond the national urban average due to geography and resourcing, the gap between a bystander who knows what to do and one who does not is the difference between a person going home from hospital and one who does not make it.

On Thursday 26 March 2026, Heart of the Nation is bringing a free one-hour CPR and AED awareness session to Griffith City Library, and if you live or work anywhere in the broader region, this is one community event that genuinely deserves to be in your diary.

The session runs from 5.30pm to 7pm and is delivered by volunteer community trainers who have designed the program specifically for people with no medical background and no prior first aid experience. The premise is simple and it is backed by decades of research into bystander response in cardiac emergencies. You do not need a certificate. You do not need clinical training. You need to know three things: how to call for help, how to push on someone's chest correctly and how to use a defibrillator if one is available. Those three actions, performed by an ordinary person in the first minutes after a cardiac arrest, can more than double the chance of survival.

The session covers the difference between a heart attack and a cardiac arrest, which are not the same thing and are not treated the same way. It covers how to recognise when someone has gone into cardiac arrest and needs CPR immediately rather than simply needing to sit down and rest. It includes hands-on practice with CPR technique, which means attendees actually have their hands on a training mannequin and get the physical experience of compressions at the correct depth and rate. And it covers the use of an automated external defibrillator, the device that is increasingly found in shopping centres, sporting clubs, community halls and public buildings across the country and that most people have seen but few have ever actually operated.

The AED is worth particular attention. Designed specifically for use by untrained bystanders, these devices talk the user through every step of the process and will only deliver a shock if the heart rhythm detected actually requires one. They cannot be used incorrectly in the sense of harming someone who does not need a shock. The barrier to using one is not technical knowledge but confidence, and that confidence is precisely what this session is designed to build.

For communities across the Carrathool, Hay, Balranald, Central Darling and Griffith local government areas, the relevance of this training is not abstract. Agricultural workplaces, sporting events, community gatherings and family situations all present circumstances where a cardiac emergency can occur without warning and where professional medical help may be many minutes away. The person most likely to be present when a neighbour, workmate or family member collapses is not a paramedic. It is someone exactly like the people who will be sitting in that library on 26 March.

When you register for the session, Heart of the Nation will ask a few short questions about your existing knowledge. That is not a test. It is a practical way for the trainers to understand the room they are walking into so they can pitch the session at a level that is genuinely useful for everyone attending, whether they have some first aid background or have never thought about CPR before in their lives.

The session is free. It takes one hour. It is held at Griffith City Library on a Thursday evening, which means it is accessible for people who work during the day. There is no meaningful barrier to attending except the decision to show up, and the upside of that decision is the possibility that when it matters most, you are not the person standing frozen in a crowd because you did not know what to do.

Registration is open now. Search Heart of the Nation CPR Griffith or click here