Find the Nearest AED Before You Need One
A defibrillator only helps if someone knows where it is. A ten-minute weekend job: find the AEDs closest to where you live, work and play, and check them.
Jarrett Chisholm, ACP · October 17, 2026
Where this is taught: CPR-A & AED, CPR-C & AED and Intermediate First Aid.
Yesterday was World Restart a Heart Day. Here is one thing you can do this weekend that will make you more useful in a cardiac arrest than any amount of reading: find out where the nearest defibrillators actually are. why the minutes before the ambulance belong to bystanders.
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Eye-level shot of a wall-mounted AED cabinet near the main entrance of a hockey arena or recreation centre, heart-and-lightning-bolt sign above it, doors and a skate rack partly visible for context. People passing in the background slightly blurred. Natural light.
Alt text ready: “A wall-mounted AED cabinet with a heart and lightning bolt symbol beside the main doors of a hockey arena.”
In an emergency, nobody has time to look. The person sent to get the AED either knows exactly where it is, or they spend the most valuable minutes of the arrest wandering corridors asking strangers. A defibrillator you walk past every day and have never noticed is, for practical purposes, not there.
This takes about ten minutes, spread across the places you already go.
Walk your three places
Think about where you spend most of your waking hours. For most people that is home, work, and one other place: a gym, an arena, a school, a church, a pool, a mall. Those are the places you are most likely to be standing when someone collapses.
At each one, find the AED. Look near main entrances, reception desks, elevators, change rooms and gym floors. They usually live in a wall cabinet, often white or green, marked with a heart and a lightning bolt. If you cannot find one, ask the front desk, the building manager or the safety officer. The answer is useful either way: if there is not one, that is worth knowing too.
At home, the nearest AED is probably in a building down the street: a community hall, a school, a recreation centre. Knowing that it exists, and whether the building is open in the evening, is worth a walk around the block.
Check what you find
An AED is only ready if its battery and pads are. Most units have a status indicator, usually a light or a small screen, that shows the machine has passed its own self-test. The pads come sealed with an expiry date printed on the package, and they expire long before the machine does.
What to look at when you find one:
- Is the status indicator showing ready, not a warning or a fault?
- Can you see the pad expiry date, and is it in the future?
- Is the cabinet unlocked? Some sound an alarm when opened, which is normal and fine.
- Is it reachable at the hours you are there, not behind a door that is locked in the evening?
- Is there a pair of child pads or a child setting, if children use the building?
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Close-up of an AED in its open cabinet: the status indicator lit green in focus on one side, the sealed pad package visible with the printed expiry date legible. A fingertip pointing at the date is fine. Clean, bright light, no brand logos prominent.
Alt text ready: “Close view of an AED showing a green ready indicator and a sealed pad package with its expiry date printed on it.”
You do not need to open anything at a public site. Just look. If the status light shows a fault, or the pads are out of date, tell whoever runs the building. It is an easy fix for them and they often do not know.
At work, ask one more question
If your workplace has an AED, ask who is responsible for checking it. Somebody should be looking at the status light and the pad dates on a schedule. If nobody is, offer to add it to the monthly first aid kit check. It takes a minute. the monthly equipment check that can include the AED.
If your workplace does not have one, it is a reasonable thing to raise with a safety committee or a manager. They are far less expensive than most people assume, and on a site with many people or a long ambulance response time, they are one of the most useful pieces of safety equipment you can own. the two-day workplace certificate that includes AED use.
On the day
When someone collapses, send a specific person for the AED and tell them exactly where it is: the cabinet by the front doors, beside the reception desk. Specific directions get the machine back faster than go find a defibrillator.
If you are alone, call 911 on speaker. Dispatchers work with the emergency system and may be able to tell you if there is a registered AED nearby. But the fastest AED is always the one somebody already knew about.
Quick answers
- Where are AEDs usually kept?
- Near main entrances, reception desks, elevators, gyms and change rooms, usually in a wall cabinet marked with a heart and a lightning bolt. If you cannot find one, ask the front desk or the building manager.
- How do I know if an AED is working?
- Most AEDs run a self-test and show the result on a status light or small screen. Check that it shows ready rather than a warning, and that the pads are sealed and within their printed expiry date.
- What if the AED cabinet sounds an alarm when I open it?
- That is normal for many cabinets. The alarm is there to draw attention, not to stop you. Take the AED and go.