If you are a GP or run a hospital, a wall-mounted defibrillator storage unit is an obvious thing to have. But sometimes defibrillators can be found in very strange places.
According to the British Heart Foundation, the best place for a defibrillator is in an unlocked cabinet where members of the public can get to use it easily. It noted that thefts are very rare.
These cabinets can even be outside, although you would need some sort of temperature control system to keep it warm if it’s a place where temperatures can drop below freezing in winter.
Since access and convenience are the primary considerations, the best place to put defibrillators can often be somewhere a little unusual. A search of the Defib map shows where these can be found.
Among them is a defibrillator just across the road from the Highland Laddie pub at Glasson in Cumbria. This might seem like nothing unusual in itself, but the defibrillator is right next to the Hadrian’s Wall Path, the 84-mile trail that follows the track of the famous ancient monument.
Being less than two miles from the western start (or end) of the trail at Bowness-on-Solway, it may appear to tired walkers to serve as a vote of no confidence that they will manage the very last stretch, or suggest to those setting off that they may not be up to walking the next 82 miles.
Perhaps the strangest place for a defibrillator of all is an old phone box on Werneth Low, a hill rising out of Hyde in Greater Manchester.
The use of an old phone box to keep a defibrillator is nothing new, but on one side of the box, instead of the word ’telephone’, is ‘Tejrwrne’. To this day, nobody - except perhaps whoever installed the sign - knows what it means.
While the mystery remains, the phone box was converted to host a defibrillator in 2020. Perhaps this is just as well. If it had retained the phone and someone suffering a heart attack had tried to dial 999 there without a defibrillator to hand, their dying word might have been a very strange one indeed.