AED training

Natalie Mickey and Emily Dueland

Dawn Cribbs/McCook Daily Gazette

Mary Sue Haag of North Platte, above, right, demonstrates the automated external defibrillator with Melissa Tucker, vocational support staff for Southwest Area Training Services, Friday afternoon at the SWATS facility in McCook, Nebraska. The AED was provided to SWATS through a grant from the Community Hospital Health Foundation. Natalie Mickey, below, right, senior coordinator at SWATS and Emily Dueland, vocational support staff, hold the actual AED device that automatically diagnoses the potentially-life-threatening cardiac arrhythmias of ventricular fibrillation and ventricular tachycardia in a patient, and is able to treat them through defibrillation -- the application of electrical therapy which stops the arrhythmia, allowing the heart to re-establish an effective rhythm.

Mary Sue Haag, right, and Melissa Tucker