Editing Defibrillation (section)

== Society and culture ==
{{more citations needed|section|date=June 2021}}

As devices that can quickly produce dramatic improvements in patient health, defibrillators are often depicted in movies, television, video games and other fictional media. Their function, however, is often exaggerated with the defibrillator inducing a sudden, violent jerk or convulsion by the patient. The pad placement is also shown wrong, along with sudden rising of patient to large height when shock is given. In reality, while the muscles may contract, such dramatic patient presentation is rare. Similarly, medical providers are often depicted defibrillating patients with a "flat-line" ECG rhythm (also known as [[asystole]]). This is not normal medical practice, as the heart cannot be restarted by the defibrillator itself. Only the cardiac arrest rhythms [[ventricular fibrillation]] and pulseless [[ventricular tachycardia]] are normally defibrillated. The purpose of defibrillation is to depolarize the entire heart all at once so that it is synchronized, effectively inducing temporary asystole, in the hope that in the absence of the previous abnormal electrical activity, the heart will spontaneously resume beating normally. Someone who is already in asystole cannot be helped by electrical means, and usually needs urgent [[CPR]] and [[intravenous]] medication (and even these are rarely successful in cases of asystole). A useful analogy to remember is to think of defibrillators as power-cycling, rather than jump-starting, the heart. There are also several heart rhythms that can be "shocked" when the patient is not in cardiac arrest, such as [[supraventricular tachycardia]] and ventricular tachycardia that produces a [[pulse]]; this more-complicated procedure is known as [[cardioversion]], not defibrillation.

In [[Australia]] up until the 1990s it was relatively rare for ambulances to carry defibrillators. This changed in 1990 after Australian [[media mogul]] [[Kerry Packer]] had a cardiac arrest due to a heart attack and, purely by chance, the ambulance that responded to the call carried a defibrillator. After recovering, Kerry Packer donated a large sum to the [[Ambulance Service of New South Wales]] in order that all ambulances in [[New South Wales]] should be fitted with a personal defibrillator, which is why defibrillators in Australia are sometimes [[colloquially]] called "Packer Whackers".<ref name="Kruszelnicki" />