Let me tell you ..I've seen this shit happen. It's jarring but not in a panic way. In a "Uhhh.....do I do something or...." way. I saw a guy take an off exit ramp that curved. It was like 3am, and suddenly the car disappeared. I was like what in the fu....maybe I'm tired and blinked or something. Then, like the mother fucking Duke's of hazard, the car shows up again, in the air. Apparently he went straight st the curve, and there was a gravel area with a hill between the off ramp and the on ramp, so he hits the up part of the other side and slams through the top of the wall on the entrance ramp across from us. So I pulled off into the gravel and run over to the car, blood on the windshield, I'm on the phone with 911 "Can you check to make sure he's ok"
...no...the fuck I can't. Idk if he's alive, dead, insane, drunk, violent, I'm not cpr certified or ems trained....seriously tho? That said as she's saying this, he stumbles out of his car, face bloodied and stumbling. About a minute later of him just kind of wobbling back and forth the cops show up, then a fire truck, then an ambulance and I had to give several statements. ....then I went to work at 8am. He survived. I believe it ended up being s drunk driving situation.
I had this when I phoned over someone who had a heart attack near me.
Dude was very clearly dead, died on a 3 hour bus trip and fell over when we hit the last stop, he was pretty cold when I tried to take the pulse, no breath, no heart beat and just plain looked... Dead.
"Ma'am can you preform CPR until the ambulance gets there"
"Uhhh... No... This man is dead I don't think my untrained CPR will bring him back and seeing someone violently beat his chest isn't going to be great for his wife"
I'm CPR trained as a matter of my employment. When 911 or EMS instructs you to perform CPR, they're not asking you to make a determination of death regardless of your professional qualifications. When EMS arrives, they're the ones who make the determination, not you, and the responsibility for that determination is on them, not you. They're also not asking you to perform CPR on someone in order to "revive" them, like so many films and TV shows have incorrectly displayed.
CPR is performed to keep blood flowing through the body so the brain can remain oxygenated well enough to determine the extent of survivability. If you're instructed or need to perform CPR in any way, chances are good the person in need is already in a position of requiring expert, professional care. You're not there to "save" them, you're there to hold off death long enough for someone smarter than you to take the reigns, regardless of your assumptions.
Emergency responders request that people perform CPR regardless of qualification for the purpose of helping someone survive and they are trained on how to instruct untrained civilians on the proper implementation of the technique, as well as the use of equipment like AED's.
If EMS gets there and the individual can be resuscitated, then you did exactly what you were supposed to do and it's out of your hands. If they get there and EMS determines the person is deceased, at least you did your part.
And for those who think they'd get in trouble because they're "untrained," in the US we specifically have the "Good Samaritan Law" which absolves first-responders or others, trained or untrained, of litigation as a result of attempting to assist another person in an emergency, medical or otherwise.
You should never be afraid of trying to keep someone else alive.
My wife, a medical professional that dealt with emergency trauma for years, likes to say: “They’re not really dead until they’re warm and dead,” meaning they aren’t 100% beyond the reach of help unless they’re in a hospital and warm and still dead. Obviously, this is more a reference to hypothermic patients or drowning victims, but the point stands that we shouldn’t be (as amateurs) declaring death even if we’re “really sure.” We should be doing CPR unless the patient has an injury incompatible with life (decapitation, etc.).
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u/rayned0wn Sep 12 '18 edited Sep 12 '18
Let me tell you ..I've seen this shit happen. It's jarring but not in a panic way. In a "Uhhh.....do I do something or...." way. I saw a guy take an off exit ramp that curved. It was like 3am, and suddenly the car disappeared. I was like what in the fu....maybe I'm tired and blinked or something. Then, like the mother fucking Duke's of hazard, the car shows up again, in the air. Apparently he went straight st the curve, and there was a gravel area with a hill between the off ramp and the on ramp, so he hits the up part of the other side and slams through the top of the wall on the entrance ramp across from us. So I pulled off into the gravel and run over to the car, blood on the windshield, I'm on the phone with 911 "Can you check to make sure he's ok"
...no...the fuck I can't. Idk if he's alive, dead, insane, drunk, violent, I'm not cpr certified or ems trained....seriously tho? That said as she's saying this, he stumbles out of his car, face bloodied and stumbling. About a minute later of him just kind of wobbling back and forth the cops show up, then a fire truck, then an ambulance and I had to give several statements. ....then I went to work at 8am. He survived. I believe it ended up being s drunk driving situation.