SCA UK and the Essex Cardiothoracic Centre in Basildon are joining forces again to create short, informative videos for people surviving out-of-hospital cardiac arrests and their families.
We all know how important it is to talk to doctors and to other professionals after an SCA, to access appropriate therapy as needed or to speak to someone who has been through all this before and can help us make sense of all the changes and challenges.
However, we also know how difficult it is to make all of this happen!
Leaflets, FAQs and podcasts can be a good starting point to understand a bit more about an SCA and its consequences; but nothing is as direct, powerful and arguably informative as hearing survivors’ experiences straight from their own mouths!
If you have suffered a cardiac arrest – no matter how long ago, for what reason, or how quick/slow your recovery was, you can make a difference in somebody’s life right now.
All you need to help us is around 30 minutes of your time, a computer/phone/tablet to record videos and feel comfortable with small excerpts of your recordings being collated with those of other survivors. These will then be made publicly available on the internet and made accessible via SCA UK.
If you are a survivor’s key supporter – wife, husband, brother, sister, daughter, son etc we need you too! Keep checking our Facebook group as we will soon want your help too.
“OK, I’m in! What do I do?”
Easy!
Grab your recording device (computer/phone/tablet) and set it up to record some brief videos.
Set up
Recording yourself needn’t be a hassle or a complicated process, just watch the following short video which gives all the information you should need…
To sum up:
Find a location that has the following attributes:
- smaller sized room
- quiet and free from distraction
- good natural lighting
- furnished with soft surfaces such as a sofa, cushions, and curtains
- doesn’t have too many hard flat surfaces like a wooden floor or plain walls
Position your recording equipment so that you:
- face any windows, ensuring they are behind your recording device
- avoid using overhead lights, instead, use a table lamp at eye level
- have a decluttered neutral background e.g. the wall behind a sofa
- make sure you do not record anything personal you do not want to share e.g. family photos
- have your device in landscape orientation (horizontal)
- position your device at roughly an arm’s length away (roughly 3-4 feet)
- adjust the position so that it captures you approximately from the waist up with not too much space above your head
- are at eye level with the camera – use a stand or pile of books if necessary
When recording:
- Talk to the camera and NOT the screen. Phones/tablets usually have the camera at the top and so looking at the screen when in landscape mode makes it look like you are not engaging with the viewer.
- Be comfortable in your seating position and with your message
What to say
Talk freely about each one of these topics, but try to keep it short and sweet.
Make sure you record a separate video for each one of them, so if you want to re-record it you don’t have to start from scratch!
- Your cardiac arrest.
- What was the cause?
- Where did it happen?
- What treatment(s) did you have?
- What medication(s) are you taking now
- How do you feel now?
- Fatigue and cognition
- Describe your experience with fatigue
- Is it a problem for you?
- How has it changed with time?
- How do you cope with it?
- Memory, attention, and other thinking skills – have you noticed any changes?
- Have your family or friends noticed them?
- Do you use any strategies to cope with them?
- Mood
- How did the SCA affect you emotionally?
- Do you feel more anxious or, low?
- Are you more aware of your own mortality?
- How was your experience of recovery? linear? or a roller-coaster?
- Do you have any tips to share with other survivors?
- Practical stuff – Challenges and what helped?
- How was your experience of returning to drive? DVLA, ICD
- How was your experience of returning to work?
- How was your experience of going on holiday? insurance, ICD, heat, meds
- How was your experience of returning to “normal life”!
- Any further tips/advice for other survivors?
Once you have finished recording, send each one of your videos to [Paul add a weblink here!]. They will be professionally edited and made available for free to other survivors.
Of course, we will let you know on the SCA UK Facebook group when they are made available so you can check them out too!
If you have any questions/curiosities about the above, I will be happy to answer them – just drop me an email at [email protected] . No question is too small!
We can only make a difference if we all work together. Thanks for your help!