The paramedics arrived and walked slowly down the length of the pool to the gym. This was procedure, they later told me, they didn't want to run and cause alarm.
That shocks me a little.
That shocks me a little.
10 seconds may be the difference between life and death, but it's also only 10 seconds. You can pick up and lose 10 seconds quite easily. If they drove from 1 mile away, 10 seconds is the difference between 35 and 40 mph, or 60 and 70 mph. They could have saved 50 seconds if they drove 70 instead of 35; should they have?
10 seconds can be the difference between life and death, but sometimes it's not. In this case, the temporarily deceased waited an extra 10 seconds an came through it with no lasting damage at all. I'm hoping that someone, somewhere did the math on this, and determined that haste causes more problems -- either when an EMT trips and falls and injures himself, or when an EMT trips and falls and ends up taking twice as long to reach the injured person anyway, or when the EMT rushes to the injured patient and forgets the AED in the ambulance, or when the EMT administers the wrong treatment in his haste -- than it solves.
Granted, if my loved one died 10 seconds before the EMTs arrived, I might have some lingering anger, and if I died while watching EMTs slowly, nonchalantly walk towards me, my dying thought might be "Fuuuuuuuck yoooooooou EMTs", but from the perspective of a detached observer it makes perfect sense.
I don't know if they're doing the right thing for the patient or not; just that that was the surprising info in the article, for me.
http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/emergency_response/common_misconcep... (escape panic is rare; disaster shock is rare and short lived; public reaction to disasters is adaptive but might overwhelm unprepared public agencies expecting to be in control)
Edit: As for walking in general, it could also be because they wouldn't want a crowd to form which could obstruct them should they need to evacuate you more quickly.
T(walking_now) + T(walking_later) < T(running_now) + T(moving_through_crowd_later)
Unless it was really slippery, or if they thought someone was going to flip out to the point where it seriously interfered with the CPR, taking your time doesn't seem like the best thing to do for the victim.
To me this is disgraceful, it sounds like OSHA got involved and made policy something that must surely be counter intuitive. Yes, I know the statistics of small risk- done often, but this is such a sad condition for our special to have reached when people carrying life saving equipment don't move a little faster to save someone.
You wouldn't happen to use a staging server, would you?
Rule #1 in any first-responder situation is to keep the rescuer safe. There are tons and tons of examples where rushing led to mistakes that killed the rescuer AND the patient.
So don't be upset! Moving with caution is not an OSHA rule - it is best practice learned over decades of hard-earned experience.
If you infrequently enter a situation which has a low chance of hurting you, you are probably fine. But if you frequently enter those situations then it's just a matter of time before it happens to you.
Our professional emergency response people should be capable of hustling/running over to the people that need their help while maintaining their composure and ability to think.
It is true that exertion causes a sympathetic response, but hustling/running over to someone doesn't produce such a significant sympathetic response where people can't think straight. I know that it's inherently a stressful situation, but our professionals should be able to handle that, and the additional stress of hustling/running over is negligible.
(Source: I was a certified EMT-Basic)