TempoLife › Features › Defibrillators and cardiac arrest response › siting
Where to put one in a building
The three-minute round trip is the design rule. Outdoor over indoor, entrance over office, unlocked over secure, and why a device behind a reception desk that closes at six is half a device.
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 three-minute round trip
The planning rule used across public-access programmes is that a person should be able to leave the patient, reach the device and return within about three minutes. That means roughly a ninety-second walk each way, and it is a much shorter distance than it sounds once stairs, doors, lifts and a panicking runner are included. Walk it yourself, at a run, from the furthest corner of your site. If the round trip is over three minutes, the answer is a second device rather than a better sign.
Outdoors beats indoors
A device inside a building is available when the building is. A heated outdoor cabinet on an external wall, with lighting and a keypad code the dispatcher holds, is available at three in the morning — and a meaningful share of arrests happen outside working hours, at home, in the street or in a car park. In a Nordic or Baltic winter the cabinet must be insulated and heated, because both the battery and the pad gel are specified for a temperature range and an unheated box on a north wall in February is outside it.
Entrances, not offices
Put the device where a stranger will find it: the main entrance lobby, the reception area, next to the lift, at the top of the main stairs. Not in the first-aid room, not in the manager's office, not in a locked cupboard "so it does not get stolen". Theft and vandalism of public defibrillators happen and they are still the wrong thing to optimise for; an alarmed cabinet and a visible sign address it well enough. If the building has a security desk that is staffed round the clock, beside it is an excellent spot.
Sites that should think harder
Anywhere with crowds, older people or physical exertion: sports halls, gyms, swimming pools, stadiums, running and ski trails, shopping centres, transport hubs, care homes, large workplaces, schools and community halls. Trails and open sites are the hard case, because the addresses are poor and the walk is long — a device at the trailhead with clear coordinates in the register is worth more than one at the ranger's office. Multi-storey buildings should think in vertical zones rather than floor area: a lift ride each way eats the three-minute budget quickly.
Signs are half the installation
Two kinds of sign, and most sites fit only the first. The green AED symbol on the cabinet itself, so somebody standing in front of it knows what it is. And directional signage from the entrance, the lift lobby and the main corridor, so somebody who has just been told by a dispatcher that there is a device in this building can find it without asking. Add the location to the site's fire-and-emergency plan and to the induction for new staff, and put the exact wording of the location into the national register entry.
Sources: European Resuscitation Council · hjertestarter.dk · checked 2026-09-08
Frequently asked questions
How far apart should devices be?
Close enough that anyone on the site can fetch one and return within about three minutes. Walk the route at a run from the furthest point; if it takes longer, add a device rather than a sign.
Indoors or outdoors?
Outdoors in a heated, lit, alarmed cabinet if you can. It makes the device available round the clock, which is when a large share of arrests happen. Indoor placement ties availability to opening hours.
Will it not be stolen if it is outside?
It happens, and it is still the wrong thing to design around. An alarmed cabinet, a camera and a visible sign are the normal answer; a locked cupboard inside a closed building protects the device and abandons the patient.
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.
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.
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.