Posted on 12/28/2010 7:11:33 PM PST by Free ThinkerNY
The epic blizzard kept city medics so busy that -- for the first time ever -- they were given a time limit for performing CPR on patients, The Post has learned.
EMS workers normally call a doctor for advice after working on a patient for 20 minutes.
The doctor normally allows them to keep trying to revive the person, sometimes letting them continue for more than an hour.
But faced with an enormous backlog of 1,300 calls, the medics were told to quit after 20 minutes and move on to the next case.
CPR can last a long time and sometimes medics can work on patients for as long as an hour.
If the certified first responders, in this case firefighters, are on the scene and they are doing CPR for 20 minutes or more, they can call Telelmetry (FDNY doctors) who review the information at hand and decide if they can terminate that call and stop treatment.
Also yesterday, there were five-hour delays in responding to some 911 medical calls and even three-hour delays in responding to "priority" calls, which range from cardiac arrest to a report of an unconscious person.
The number of calls was so high in the city that units from New Jersey were called in to help.
Patrick Bahnken, head of the paramedics and EMT union, said he was told of one case in which police alerted the FDNY that an unconscious person had died after going 90 minutes without help.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Rationing human life... the Left has arrived!
The problem would be that the loved one would not be transported to the hospital. The FDNY Medics would leave the scene and call a hearse or more likely take the now deceased body with them.
It is likely that the FDNY Medics would prevent loved ones from intervening. A quick Google finds that intent to prevent an emergency medical services professional from performing his duty is a class C felony.
Amen. I was the first responder to a home hospice patient who arrested right before I got there. She’d only been diagnosed a week before with cancer metastasized everywhere, so the family weren’t ready to let go. No DNR. Do everything, they said.
So I hauled this poor woman off her bed onto the hard floor, broke a couple of ribs with the first chest compression, kept breaking ribs as we went on, suctioned out the stomach contents that the compressions brought up into her mouth and airway - and this is CPR done correctly, for those who don’t know. Brittle, old, cancer-riddled, or blunt trauma’d bones break and keep breaking.
Kept getting pulseless electrical activity on the cardiac monitor. I am very grateful that the ER doctor called a halt as soon as we got there.
I wish that the family had not called 911 when they did. That they had sat with her, and told her they loved her, and held her until they were ready to let go, and washed and dressed her, and then called us. How many times do you want your mother to die?
In this case, I don’t think the dying woman suffered from what we did to her, that she was gone. But sometimes there is more lingering, maybe more awareness. And the family lost something too. But they weren’t ready, and maybe thinking that they did everything they could and that we did too is consolation to them.
That’s the rub. Some families think that if they don’t request “everything” be done for their loved one that they’ve “killed grandma”. I’ve been in situations where I very gently tell them that this is natural, we all die, let’s make grandma comfortable. I don’t get graphic, but I say, do we really want to put her through a full code? Is that what she would want? Myself, I would (and have) told my family absolutely not. Let me die peacefully if there’s no hope. And they know that I’m an organ donor, so please take what they (patients who would benefit) need if I’m brain dead and on life support.
Not very much - the EMTs tried CPR, but rapidly switched to the AED.
Yes, that's true. In my case, the EMTs switched from CPR to AED, and de-fibbed me twice in the ambulance on the way to the hospital.
Good to see people getting comfortable with rationing.
The EMTs need to get to the next patient - an obese lady stuck in her bathtub.
I originally posted thinking that the point was that the medics needed to move onto other patients under emergency conditions.
I was trying to find out what an average citizen could do to help their loved one after 20 minutes of CPR. I have gotten sound points about oxygen, and the need for drugs to keep them here and have a decent chance. If they did revive, taking to the hospital could be done by loved ones.
I don’t know if they would take a dead body with them when they are busy going to one emergency after another during extreme weather conditions.
But a felony???? Really??? How long has that been on the books?? If the person is DEAD, how could anyone be charged with interfering???
I suspect if an EMT team declared someone beyond further help, they would not want a citizen to continue working on someone with the possibility of proving them wrong.
It's the government. They would probably not allow a private individual to intervene in any way at all.
Hmmf.
I do not doubt that.
Very happy that skilled EMT’s and the proper equipment were there when you needed them.
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