FWIW, your chances of survival go down about 10% for every minute you go without CPR. In addition, cardiac arrest survival rates across all types of EMS systems track very closely to rates of bystander CPR. So you are better off with a bystander performing CPR than not.
I’m still not sure how I feel about this case, I’m at work so I’ll try to post more later.
St. Urho
Paramedic
So, do you believe that the woman in this case **knew **that her friend’s back was broken? If she had known, are you sure she would have done the same? Is it common knowledge to never move an accident victim that you believe is in grave danger where they are? Or is that the one exception when you do, because saving a life is the priority even if further injury is possible?
It’s too bad it’s gonna cost her a boatload of money to have these questions asked and answered.
Addendum: Sorry for the multiple posts. I have a short attention span and am only able to post my response to individual items. I’ll try to do better about consolidating in the future.
How can anyone not in the medical field be expected to render “medical care” while attempting to provide assistance? A car accident occurs and the child is restrained in the vehicle. Due to the forces of the accident and due to the larger size of the childs head the child sustains a cervical fracture along with other injuries and is unconscious. The car is now on fire and the mother was thrown from the vehicle and unconscious. The only bystanders are servers at a local bar with no medical experience what so ever. An ambulance is on the way with a speedy 5 minute ETA but by that time the fire will have reached the child. The server rushes in to save the child but in the process “allegedly worsened the injuries suffered by the child”. Its clear he provided non medical care and caused the child to be paralyzed.
So the mother does what any decent American does this day and sues the server!
The server now has a highly stressful situation and has to pay for a lawyer. Whats that you say? No jury will ever find this guy guilty of damages or pain and suffering inflicted on the child? This is America the land will you can get 2.86 million dollars for spilling coffee on your cooter.
This happens somewhere in the USA every day and is done by medical professionals. Its called a rapid extrication. Granted we are expected to be more gentle then Ms. Lisa Torti but I could be assuming too much here.
There might be more information elsewhere, but just going by that article, Torti is the only one who hasn’t made that mistake. The judge has mentioned explosions, the other witnesses have mentioned explosions, and the writer of the article has mentioned explosions, but Torti apparently testified that she “feared the car was about to catch fire”.
The goggles they do nothing!
Hauswald M, Ong G, Tandberg D, et al: “Out-of-hospital spinal immobilization: Its effect on neurologic injury.” Academic Emergency Medicine. 5(3):214–219, 1998.
The University of New Mexico (UNM) School of Medicine has an excellent Department of Emergency Medicine. In this study, one of their faculty members, Mark Hauswald, performed an interesting study. Dr. Hauswald retrospectively reviewed all cases of prehospital spinal immobilization brought to the UNM Medical Center over a five-year period. Then, these were compared with cases from a similar hospital in Malaysia for the same five-year period.
Interestingly, spinal immobilization is very rarely, if ever, used in Malaysia. In fact, most nurses and physicians in Malaysia could not recall ever seeing a patient with spinal immobilization applied. Surprisingly, the researchers found there was less neurological injury in the Malaysian patients (who were not immobilized) when compared with the patients in Albuquerque (who received state-of-the-art immobilization).
They concluded there was less than a 2% chance that prehospital spinal immobilization had any beneficial effect.
So you are accusing the judges of not giving their honest interpretation of the text of the law but substituting their own opinions knowing full well that that is not what the law intended? And your evidence for this is…?
So, interpreting the law the way you like is good but interpreting it the other way is bad? Isn’t it the responsibility of the law itself to be clear enough so that judges would be quite unanimous in their interpretation?
Unless you provide some evidence that the judges were maliciously mis-inyterpreting the law I don’t think you have a case.
Why didn’t you pit them instead of the judges? They’re the ones responsible unless you can prove otherwise.
I was skimming through this trainwreck praying one of the other board folks with EMS experience would show up…must have been a busy night. I will try to address some of the more horriffic misconceptions.
One of the first things they teach in first aid classes is don’t move injured people unless you have to. EMS folks are trained how to move injured people.
CHP traffic studies only come up with something like 2-3% of motor vehicle accidents resulting in fires, explosions are very very rare. Skimming the article I saw no mention of the vehicle being on fire. Wrecked vehicles often leak fluids, many of them hot and steamy. Thanks to hollywood and the “A-Team” version of reality where everything that trades paint with a pole ends with an explosion, I can see where someone might panic. During my time in the feild only 1 explosion related to a car accident occurred and that involved a small propane tanker.
Absent an immediate threat to life like a vehicle fire, this woman did not act reasonably. The urge to “do something” will often result in bigger problems if you have limited skills.
Heh, medics, like you do compressions, thats what EMT’s are for. 
Rib/sternum fractures should not be a goal but if it happens it happens. I have done compressions more times than I can count and have broken ribs on dozens of occasions. Every patient is different.
My EMT teacher put it perfectly IMHO.
You might break a rib or two, you might break their sternum, and they will hurt like hell later. At least they will be alive to feel it.
Its also only done when you have a patient who is still in danger because of their position or environment. It is not done for giggles, its done because car is on fire/pool of gasoline from overturned gas tanker getting close to the downed power line/you’re underwater/etc.
That’s the thing. I don’t believe it was done for giggles. Further, a layman’s perception of a dangerous or critical situation is going to be very different that that of a professional emergency services provider.
If the Good Samaritan laws are not intended to apply to non-EMS bystanders using their judgment, likely based on limited experience, to help people, I think we’re going to see a lot more people just standing by while those in need suffer needlessly.
For this woman, it seems the rules have changed midstream. All she can continue to say to herself was, “I thought I was doing the right thing” and second-guess every decision she makes. If only emergencies gave us the luxury to do that.
The test for the reasonableness of her conduct would consider the situation she faced.
Are you suggesting that “panic” ought to absolve individuals of injuries they cause? Or that we ought to deem it “reasonable” for people to panic when others’ health and well-being are at stake? I think that would be an unfortunate policy.
Well, aren’t you a cool cucumber? Perhaps the word ‘panic’ makes you think of hysteria, but I used ‘panic’ to mean a sense of fear and urgency. What came to my mind was when my father’s heart stopped and my panicked mom, having had no recent CPR training, did the best she could making sure that my dad had oxygen to his brain while waiting for the EMT to arrive. Sure, she could have made a mistake in how it’s done. Perhaps she did err. Had she not done it, though, he would surely have died or suffered irreparable brain damage. But you have to know my mom – she was clearly panicked.
Panicked people can still use their best judgment to help someone. And yes, I do think that it should absolve laymen for injuries they cause. Because if they hadn’t caused them, the individual might very well be dead if they hadn’t acted. And that’s something you can’t know until AFTER the fact.
ETA: The test for reasonableness of her conduct should also take into account the situation she perceived, which I’m not convinced was unreasonable.
This is what I have been saying the whole thread. I don’t know if she was unreasonable and the reasonableness of her actions must be determined based on the situation she faced. The court did not say she was unreasonable just that she is not immune from suit based on that particular statute. If a jury looking at all the facts feels that given the circumstances it was not unreasonable for her to feel fire or explosion was eminent and that that outweighed the potential for spinal injury then she should prevail. I agree that a lawsuit is a pain in the ass, but we also have a young woman who will never walk again.
Forget this case. Ask yourself if somebody does something that you consider to be totally unreasonable under the circumstances they face and react to an emergency in a totally inappropriate manner and cause totally unnecessary injuries that any reasonable person in the same circumstances feeling the same level of fear would have avoided, should the unreasonable and unnecessary injury just be forgiven even though it was a result of unreasonable actions?
You’re right. It’s subjective. My reasonable may not be the same as your reasonable. But the fallout is this: if you put people in the situation in which their lives and that of their families can be destroyed through legal action, less people will act to help people in need. More people will suffer. That’s why Good Sam laws exist, to encourage people to act.
I just think it’s a terrible thing when we encourage litigious behavior over communal behavior. But maybe that’s just me.
Good Sam laws exist to protect people from far more insidious stuff.
Example: guy collapses with no pulse in front of me, I call 911, start CPR. Medics arrive, still cant get the guy back. GS laws prevent me from being sued claiming my poor CPR skills are the reason why he was beyond help when the medics arrived.
If you go into a situation and make it worse through your lack of skills plan on opening yourself up to lawsuit. Its usually pretty hard to mess up a bad situation unless you do something stupid. Moving a seriously injured person without proper training in the abscence of an immediate threat of further injury.
It is common knowledge? Since when? I didn’t know about it. Maybe I’m just cold hearted, but here it is. If I can help you I will. But if I believe you will turn right around and sue me, ruin me for helping, then you won’t be getting any help at all. Sorry, but that’s how it is.
I won’t pretend to have the same level of training as you have – not by a long shot, but I hope you won’t object to my interjection here.
The ability to determine whether you “have to” move an injured person is probably the toughest part, especially in an emergency or panicked state. My husband and I have been “CERTified” by 3 different communities’ fire departments, and when the instructors go through their hypotheticals on what to do if you come upon an accident victim who’s still in the vehicle, it’s incredible how many people get it wrong on the first try.
You come across an accident and the driver is slumped over the steering wheel. You reach in to feel for a pulse and can’t find one, do you move the person and risk spinal injury? Pretty much every hand that went up answered, ‘No’. Except for one problem; if they don’t have a pulse, what are they? For all intents and purposes, they’re DEAD. So the risk of a neck or spinal injury is pretty damn unimportant if what you’re going to have to do is try to bring them back to any life at all!
Ok, so what position do they need to be in to properly perform CPR? Flat on the ground. How do you get them there? Move them out of the car! Except we’re lay people, not EMTs, so we don’t have a neck brace or a back board, and even though we’ve already dialed 911, those 5 minutes it will take for the paramedics, police or firefighters to arrive will mean the difference between any life or no life, or a fully-recovered life or a life with severe brain damage.
I’ve been trained to move the victim under such a circumstance. How many “good samaritans” won’t bother to do so with this new ruling? Having had 2 cousins (one of whom was 6 years old, and whose grave stone we’re going to the unveiling of tomorrow) killed in a horrible car accident, I can’t imagine the added anguish her surviving mother would be suffering had she had to watch bystanders hang around and do nothing to try to assist, even though they were ultimately unsucccessful.
I really don’t think you have enough information to have reasonably come to that conclusion.
Slightly OT, but not, I would encourage everyone in the U.S. who’s reading this thread to contact their own local fire department and inquire about their CERT training program. They’re available in nearly every community throughout the United States, and are either free or at very little cost (like $20). Or enter your zip code here for a potential list of programs in your area. I highly recommend it. It’s not just valuable training to have, but it’s FUN!
The “if” applied to all three conditions. 1.adult 2. allergy 3. common knowledge…
I am not saying people should be sue happy or that they should not overlook understandable fuck-ups when a good samaritan tries to rescue them, all I am saying is that when some dumb ass tries to put out a tiny fire in your driveway with a clearly marked can of napalm and burns your fucking house down he shouldn’t get to just walk away saying I was just trying to help…
Please Lord Jesus let me find California Supreme Court Justice Carlos Moreno (or one of the other justices of the majority) or Alexandra Van Horn trapped in their burning automobile, begging me to save them. Pleeeeeeease.
Why on earth do you think there should be a duty to rescue a stranger. What if you are not physically fit enough to help or not mentally competent or if by helping you endanger your own family? Should everyone be subjected to a lawsuit for not helping a situation they had nothing to do with creating? Helping out is laudable and as I explained up thread I have frequently done it, but now you want to impose a duty. That means subjecting everyone who does not help to a lawsuit. I don’t think you guys think this stuff through…