TempoLife › Features › Defibrillators and cardiac arrest response › finding-one
Where public defibrillators actually are
The green sign with the heart and the lightning bolt, the places that reliably have one, the cabinets that are locked and the ones that are not, and what to do when you have thirty seconds to decide whether to go looking.
CPR in sixty seconds
- Unresponsive and not breathing normally? Gasping is not breathing. Treat it as a cardiac arrest.
- Call 112 (113 in Norway). Speaker on, phone on the floor. Stay on the line — the dispatcher will coach you.
- Push hard and fast in the centre of the chest: 5–6 cm in an adult, 100–120 per minute, letting the chest come all the way back up.
- Send somebody else for a defibrillator. Do not go yourself unless it is seconds away. Keep compressing.
- Turn the device on and do what it says. It decides whether to shock. After a shock, go straight back to compressions.
This is a reference written for bystanders, not a diagnosis, a training course or medical advice. It cannot tell you what is wrong with a particular person, and it does not replace the dispatcher on the other end of an emergency call — they can see what is near you and they will talk you through it. If you are worried about your own heart, or about a symptom, that is a conversation with a clinician rather than a page on a website.
The sign is standardised, and it is worth learning
Public-access defibrillators are marked with the ILCOR-derived symbol: a white heart with a lightning bolt through it on a green square, usually with the letters AED and often an arrow. Green means safety equipment throughout Europe, so the sign is deliberately the same colour family as an emergency exit. Once you have seen it you notice them constantly — in station concourses, shopping-centre atria, gym corridors, ferry gangways and town-hall entrances — which is by far the most useful preparation an individual can do.
Where the odds are good
Devices cluster where crowds, exercise and public money meet. In this region, reliable places to look are railway and bus stations, airports and ferry terminals, large shopping centres, swimming pools and sports halls, gyms, stadiums, town halls and libraries, larger schools, big offices and industrial sites, hotels, and increasingly pharmacies and fire stations. Trains, long-distance coaches, ferries and aircraft carry them on board. Villages in this region often have one on the wall of the community centre, the shop or the fire station, funded by the municipality or a local association.
Cabinets, codes and alarms
Indoor cabinets are usually unlocked and often alarmed — opening one sets off a siren, which is intentional and helps rather than hinders. Outdoor cabinets in a cold climate are heated and are more often locked with a keypad, in which case the code is given by the dispatcher when you call, and sometimes printed on the cabinet. If a cabinet is locked and you have no code, call 112 and say exactly where you are standing: the dispatcher usually has the code. Do not spend more than a few seconds on a locked box while somebody is not breathing.
The open map, and its limits
OpenStreetMap carries defibrillators as emergency=defibrillator nodes with optional detail about the floor, the opening hours and the access, contributed by volunteers under an open licence — about 174,000 objects worldwide at the time of writing. Several free apps and the OpenAEDMap project render exactly this layer. It is genuinely useful and it is genuinely incomplete: coverage is excellent in some countries and sparse in others, and nothing guarantees the cabinet is still there. Use it to learn your own neighbourhood in advance, not to plan a rescue in the moment.
The thirty-second decision
If you are alone with a collapsed adult and do not know where a device is, stay and compress. If somebody else is present, send them — with a specific destination if you have one, and with the instruction to come back either way. If you are alone but the device is visibly within a few seconds' reach, fetch it. The dispatcher, once you are on the line, can usually tell you what is nearby, which is another reason to call before you start hunting.
Sources: OpenStreetMap tag emergency=defibrillator · taginfo — count of emergency=defibrillator objects · OpenAEDMap · checked 2026-09-08
Frequently asked questions
What does the defibrillator sign look like?
A green square with a white heart and a lightning bolt through it, usually with the letters AED and often a directional arrow. It is the same green family as emergency-exit signage.
The cabinet has a keypad. How do I get the code?
Call 112 and say precisely where you are standing. Dispatchers generally hold the codes for locked cabinets in their area. Some cabinets print the code on the door.
Should I leave the patient to go and find one?
Only if you know where it is and it is very close, or if someone else can go instead. Compressions started now beat a defibrillator found in four minutes.
How the system around it works
The chain of survival, link by link
Recognition and a call, early CPR, early defibrillation, advanced care and recovery. What each link is actually worth, which one the public owns, and where the chain breaks in practice.
What the survival numbers actually say
Roughly one in ten survives an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest, and the spread between towns is wider than the spread between treatments. How to read the statistics without being misled by them.
National registers, and getting your device into one
A defibrillator the dispatcher cannot see barely exists. What a national register is, which one is the real one in each country, why registration is free, and the paid look-alikes to avoid.
Volunteer responder systems
Denmark, Sweden and Norway alert trained volunteers by phone to arrests near them — one to fetch the defibrillator, one to start compressions. How the systems work, who can join, and what happens when your phone goes off.
What a defibrillator costs to buy and to keep
The purchase is the small part. Pads and batteries expire on a schedule, cabinets and signage cost real money in a cold climate, and the recurring line is what an organisation forgets to budget for.
Everything on this subject
Before the emergency, there is a long quiet stretch
Blood pressure, resting heart rate, movement and sleep are the part of this you can act on for years beforehand. TempoLife keeps them in one place, free to start.