It was during the COVID-19 lockdowns when Justine Phillips, who was a personal trainer at the time, experienced a sudden cardiac arrest at her Mornington home.
“The day that it happened, it happened to be my son’s 16th birthday, so (my daughter) was coming to ask me about what she could make him for his birthday lunch,” Ms Phillips said.
“Once she found me on the floor, she alerted her brother, and then he came up into the room and they called 000.
“They performed CPR for eight minutes until emergency services arrived.”
For 93 minutes, Ms Phillips underwent continual CPR until her heart began beating in a normal rhythm again.
She left the hospital in Frankston with a device in her chest and a life-saving understanding of the difference between a heart attack and cardiac arrest.
“I left hospital and had a real understanding of what sudden cardiac arrest was, because I thought it was the same as a heart attack, just a different name, and it’s not,” she said.
“It’s completely different and requires different, immediate treatment to save that person’s life.
“I was like ‘wow, there’s a lot of information that we as the general public aren’t really aware of’. That’s when I thought I need to actually educate people on the difference between heart attack and cardiac arrest.”
In 2021, Ms Phillips founded Heart Matters Australia, an organisation with the mission of increasing survival rates of out-of-hospital cardiac arrests.
The following year, she completed training to deliver nationally-recognised courses such as CPR and, in 2023, she began teaching first aid courses.
She said delivering the courses was both about equipping people with the confidence to deliver immediate treatment and potentially minimising the guilt faced by those who did step in.
“Being able to arm somebody with not just the knowledge, but also the skills as well, gives them the confidence to be able to step in,” she said.
“The reality is, if that person doesn’t make it, the person who responded and was performing the CPR just knows that they did everything they could to the best of their ability."
As a result of her Seymour roots, Ms Phillips has delivered a number of courses locally.
She said education was important in regional towns, where ambulance wait times could be significantly higher than those in metropolitan areas.
Ms Phillips also offers courses in Mornington and privately to families and businesses.
Utilising the platform of Heart Matters Australia, the main message she wants to pass on is that CPR is crucial to saving a life.
“My main message is just learn CPR. Hopefully you never have to use it, but if you do, it could save someone’s life, and that makes you someone’s real-life hero,” she said.
“Being able to have an impact and save someone’s life, that’s so, so rewarding.”
Heart Matters Australia will be hosting training sessions at Griff-Fit Functional in Seymour in the evening on Wednesday, July 8.
Further sessions will be conducted on Wednesday, August 12.
For more information, visit heartmattersaustralia.com.au
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