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Original articles: Risk and trust

How do lay people come to trust the Automatic External Defibrillator?

, &
Pages 207-220 | Received 16 May 2007, Published online: 08 Aug 2008
 

Abstract

Defibrillators are now widely installed in a variety of public places for the immediate treatment of people who have collapsed with a suspected cardiac arrest. These initiatives are predicated on the defibrillator being used by ‘lay’ volunteers. This presents a problem of trust, as the volunteer rescuers need to trust an unfamiliar technology to diagnose and treat an immediately life-threatening condition they are unlikely to have encountered before. Based on qualitative interviews with volunteers and defibrillator trainers, we show how trust in the defibrillator is constructed and maintained as a social process. This trust is a complex phenomenon, placed in technology, people and institutions, all of which work together to enable the volunteer, when an emergency occurs, to ‘push the button.’

Acknowledgements

This study was funded by grants from the Resuscitation Council of the UK, and the University of Nottingham School of Nursing. Thanks to Dr. Pru Hobson-West and the two anonymous reviewers.

Notes

1. Defibrillation in this context means ventricular fibrillation, i.e. the type of heart rhythm that can be corrected by the defibrillator.

2. Many defibrillators use an electronic voice to give audible instructions, and a warning to stand clear when a shock is delivered.

3. This view has some analogies with the three-dimensional model of trust put forward by Khodyakov (Citation2007).

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