A public-access defibrillator is designed to be used by somebody who has never seen one. It analyses the heart rhythm itself and will not deliver a shock to a heart that should not be shocked, whatever button is pressed.
Turn it on and do what the voice says. That is the whole instruction.
- Pads go on bare skin: cut or tear clothing, and wipe a wet chest dry.
- One pad below the right collarbone, one on the left side below the armpit. The pads are printed with the picture.
- Nobody touches the casualty while it analyses or shocks. Say it out loud and look.
- After the shock — or after it says no shock is advised — go straight back to compressions without waiting.
If you are alone, do not leave to look for one. Compressions now beat a defibrillator in four minutes' time. If somebody else is there, send them, and have them ask the dispatcher where the nearest one is.
Pads stay on. The hospital reads what the machine recorded.
Source. European Resuscitation Council, Guidelines 2021, Basic Life Support and AED, https://cprguidelines.eu/guidelines-2021 ; International Liaison Committee on Resuscitation, https://www.ilcor.org/
What this is not. Reading, not certification.