Fun fact. I slashed my wrist with a broken bottle at a party once. Had someone call an ambulance. They said nothing major hit. Wrapped me up. Asked if I wanted a ride.
I said no cause itās dumb money. Then I asked how to pay them. They said they only charge for rides. It blew my mind. My potentially life saving call didnāt cost me anything. (Its over $1,000 for an ambulance ride).
I told them Iām good now and got a ride to the ER. Expensive stitches after waiting for hours. I shouldāve taken off the bandage and walked in dripping blood.
It blows my mind that calling an ambulance could ever cost money.
When you need an ambulance, seconds could mean the difference between life and death.
Putting a decision in front of it that could financially ruin you or the person youāre helping is absolutely bonkers.
I mean, it sounds like thatās exactly what the miserable bastard wants.
I was gonna call this cap because CPR that long after collapse has infinitesimally small odds, but I looked it up and turns out Iām wrong. CPR anyone you see down!
My understanding was always that CPR isnāt meant to revive someone its meant to keep them viable for revival by people with better training/equipment.
If youāre really good at CPR they often regain consciousness while you are doing chest compressions and complain. Every time you pause, they die again
That aināt ābeing really goodā - Thatās being stupidly lucky. I spent 20 years in the back of the bus, and I never had a revival on scene or in the rig. Nor did I ever meet anyone who ever made such a claim.
Quite often patients that are brought in with CPR in progress are called dead by the ER Doctor after another 20 or 30 minutes of effort or they do get a patient back and keep them going for another few days or a week or so. Only for the patient to finally die in hospital.
But, every so often someone surprises the hell out of us and actually survives and goes on to live for years. This is why we try as hard and as best we can to keep you alive. Because there is always a chance.
Yeah, basically youāre trying to force some circulation through the brain by manually pumping the heart - which is as much about clearing the waste buildup out of the brain as it is getting fresh oxygen to the brain, and also about preventing clots (which will later cause aneurysms when the blood starts flowing normally). Everything else is essentially expendable/repairable/replaceable.
Even the breathing part isnāt very important, though the initial check to make sure the airway is clear is very important. If youāre doing the chest compressions right, youāll force some airflow through the lungs anyway. The important part is getting the blood to circulate. Having stagnant blood sitting in the brain is really bad.
The current CPR procedure recommends 100-120 chest compressions of at least 2" (5cm) per minute. You are going to hurt them. You may crack their ribs. You need to compress the heart through their ribs and muscle and other tissue thatās in the way. Even if youāre in good physical shape, it is an exhausting thing to do. Itās definitely something worth learning to do correctly - take a class if you can! You can absolutely save someoneās life if their heart stops.
The class with a mannequin is really important to experience firsthand. Like to see that you should really start calling the emergency services and put them on speaker after youāve assessed the situation and before you start CPR. And to know how hard you have to do it. It doesnāt take incredible skill, the modern mannequins will rate your performance, as long as you go fast enough and donāt stop itās good. I was in shape at the time and I found it easy enough if you use your weight to help, I donāt think I could keep going hard for more than five minutes though.
I did CPR training a while back, including AED use. It was fun - and sobering. The takeaway was basically: the odds of your victim surviving this is low, but any chance is better than no chance. They also drilled into us that good CPR will likely crack some ribs. Which is again preferable to, you know, being dead.
They also had us training on two mannequins. First one was the āniceā dummy thatās easy to compress and teaches good form. Then they switched it out for a ālifelikeā dummy, which supposedly simulates the actual strength needed for good CPR. And man, thatās a workout for sure. After performing five minutes of solo CPR on that bad boy, I was about ready to need that AED myself. Iām quite a chunky individual, and even leveraging my body weight that took a bit of strength. We had a petite girl in our class who couldnāt manage it.
Survival rates of a heart attack are upwards of 90% from what I can find online. There are certain types where the survival rate for that type alone is much lower though.
āI SAVED YOUR LIFE !ā
āYou ruined my deathā
Incredible
i asked my first aid instructor about DNR and he responded with a very firm āyou didnāt see itā.
yeah that makes perfect sense.
non-medical professionals should not care about DNR orders, bracelets, whatevers. Because what if itās fake and you canāt tell the difference from a real one? You could, unknowingly, help someone commit a murder, or let a temporarily unstable person die, sure youād be innocent, but guilt and trauma doesnāt care about your innocence
And we are only bound by a DNR IF we have the actual document in hand. Or as EMS, if CPR has already been started when we arrive, we are automatically obligated to continue. If it aināt written down, it never happened. Nursing homes are supposed to provide the documents any time we transport such a patient as part of their medical history papers. And yes, we treat and transport a lot of such patients with a DNR that needs to go to a hospital for some reason.
Worst case scenario, entering a home with family gathered and grandma has a heart attack. And half the family wants me to start CPR and the other half tries to tell me grandma to let grandma go. I will ask them if they have the documents and they donāt answer me because they are too busy fighting each other to respond to me. And my poor driver is trying to literally breakup a fight while Iām doing CPR.
Source: A very old and happily retired medic
So did you see the things that guy on YouTube sees? https://youtube.com/shorts/PokQVSrPcR8
And even then, itās not a piece of paper that you can just accept like a death coupon. It has to be signed and not contentious, and things need to line up very correctly.
My Dad had a DNR in his legal name, but the nursing staff and his room all used the common shortening of that name. Because the names didnāt line up when things went bad and there was no one with authority to clarify they, correctly, operated under the assumption that they did not have an order.
At one point EMS providers couldnāt even make the call, it could only be done by the medical facility. Iām pretty sure thatās no longer the case anywhere in the US though.