Newcastle: The legacy lives on

The legacy of Jack Murphy will live on thanks to a new training program to improve CPR.
Jack Murphy was only 14 when he sadly died of sudden cardiac arrest in 2018. A fit and healthy young scooter star, Jack’s death was unexpected, and his family are determined not to let other families experience the same heartache.

After Jack’s death, his mother, Irish-born Siobhan Lavin Murphy, Tamara Bond and Associate Professor Brendan Boyle established the Jack Murphy Memorial Society. It aims to bring the Hunter’s Irish community together to host events to raise funds and awareness to fight sudden cardiac death.

The society held fundraising events over 2021 and 2022, culminating with the Jack Murphy Memorial Society Dinner Dance on 11 June. They have raised over $80,000 for the Hunter Medical Research Institute (HMRI), more than double their original goal.

The funds will go towards expanding the Hunter Heart Safe CPR program. This program teaches a hands-only CPR technique, backed by evidence-based research showing the most effective way to improve the rate of bystander rescue in case of a cardiac arrest.

Retrieval medicine experts Dr Mark Miller and paramedic Jeremy Pallas started Hunter Heart Safe after their experience attending to cardiac arrests, finding bystanders had not commenced CPR because they didn’t know how.

Thanks to the efforts of the Jack Murphy Memorial Society, Hunter Heart Safe will now have the resources to roll the program out more widely in Hunter schools, workplaces and sporting clubs.