With my background as a cardiology nurse, I have been trained in cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) regularly since the mid 90’s. Still, I never got to use my lifesaving skills outside work until I was alerted through the platform I had been involved in creating. This is likely the case for most people, and in Sweden alone, over 200,000 CPR educations are carried out every year in a population of 10 million. For me to be able to participate in the resuscitation of a neighbor back in 2013, and to occasionally still see him in the neighborhood, is satisfying. I want more people to experience this and see more lives saved!
To transform a somewhat crazy research idea into a successful business takes time, and one of the greatest lessons I’ve learned over the years is patience. Not the quiet, passive kind—but the active patience it takes to hold fast to a vision when decision-making moves slowly. Budgets and politics in healthcare can often create long delays, even when lives are at stake. Sometimes this felt frustrating—how could we wait, when every minute without action costs lives?
But I came to realize that change in healthcare is not only about urgency, but it is also about trust. Large systems move slowly and carefully for a reason; they must safeguard people. So instead of fighting the pace, I learned to channel that urgency into persistence. To keep showing the evidence. To keep telling the success stories of saved lives. To keep building the trust that eventually opens doors.
If there’s wisdom here, it’s this: when the mission is clear, resilience can become a strategy. Progress may not always be immediate, but with consistency and conviction, even the slowest wheels of decision-making will turn. And when they do, the impact can ripple far beyond what you imagined at the start.
We will never be able to save everyone who is struck by sudden cardiac arrest. Still, we can give everyone a fair chance of surviving by alerting CPR-trained and motivated volunteers to assist in the first critical minutes.
