Out of hospital cardiac arrest: strategy 2021 to 2026

9. Conclusion

This refreshed strategy marks a refocusing of the aims outlined within the inaugural OHCA Strategy 2015 – 2020. It is an effort to build on our successes, and to further target our work as we continue to address OHCA in Scotland.

We have made excellent progress throughout the lifetime of the 2015 strategy. Despite this, current survival rates from OHCA in Scotland are still lower than we want them to be.

At this stage, we must tackle some significant challenges in order to further improve. We must continue with our important work to get Scotland CPR ready, through raising awareness of OHCA and the importance of bystander action - but as part of this we must also address some of the misconceptions around CPR. We will also continue, through the excellent work of our partners, to support communities to prepare themselves to respond effectively to OHCA. We know that there are parts of the country, and groups of people that we need to make a particular effort to reach because they experience inequalities in outcomes from OHCA. This targeted approach to tackling inequalities is a continued area of focus for us in this refreshed strategy.

We have also sought within this strategy to support bystander action, improve accessibility of Public Access Defibrillators and ensure that we do all that we can to encourage seamless and prompt intervention for people who have an OHCA. We have identified key actions to support continuous improvements within hospital care to support recovery of people after cardiac arrest, and vitally, we have identified key actions which recognise the importance of providing aftercare support to everyone affected by OHCA.

Partnership remains at the core of this refreshed strategy. Working together to discover bright spots of best practice and applying it across our country. Improving by sharing our data and our stories. Creating better systems by understanding each other's challenges. Flourishing by celebrating each other's successes.

We want to learn from the experiences of the last five years in order to do better, equip more communities, help more individuals and save more lives. Scotland's Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest Strategy 2021-2026 sets out how we will do that.