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Vets dies waiting for ambulance to take him to the same hospital.

Stupid fucking policy. They should be fired. If we have dumb people working with no common sense, it would be way better to have robots working, instead of these idiots.
 
xltn said:
Stupid fucking policy...
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NavyOffRec said:
I can't believe no one there had the balls just to get him to the ER, kinda shows who they really care about.
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It is a relatively standard policy for companies to tell workers not to touch anyone who has a medical emergency. It's a huge liability for them if they do. Like it or not, if you touch someone who has a medical emergency and they experience complications or die from your efforts, you could be sued for a lot of money and possibly go to prison.

The implication is that since it was lunch time in a hospital cafe, you'd think a trained medical professional would be around to help, but the story makes no distinction that this was the case.

What I am more surprised at is that no one had the presence of mind to contact the hospital, who could have sent medical professionals next door to help in just 4 minutes.
 
There must be a phone in the cafeteria. The report wasnt clear. I was thinking someone must have called over to the ER with Va's internal phone and they hesitated because it was not a 911 call. Anyways, this is a very sad story.
 
Yea, the story isn't very descriptive. We don't know why the man collapsed, if any doctors were present, what those doctors did if they were present, and whether the doctor's actions were in accordance with proper medical practices. Nor do we know if anyone contacted the ER directly in addition to dialing 911.

I was just pointing out that I'm not surprised that cafeteria staff were told not to touch someone with a medical emergency, as, sadly, we live in a society where one could be sued or go to prison for trying to help.
 
Spekkio said:
It is a relatively standard policy for companies to tell workers not to touch anyone who has a medical emergency. It's a huge liability for them if they do. Like it or not, if you touch someone who has a medical emergency and they experience complications or die from your efforts, you could be sued for a lot of money and possibly go to prison.

The implication is that since it was lunch time in a hospital cafe, you'd think a trained medical professional would be around to help, but the story makes no distinction that this was the case.

What I am more surprised at is that no one had the presence of mind to contact the hospital, who could have sent medical professionals next door to help in just 4 minutes.
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In one of the articles, maybe the subsequent ones it said medical personnel were on hand rendering aid (CPR), I can understand if a admin person, or a non medical person was the only one around, but it was a hospital for god sakes.

If the people at this VA are like the ones I have dealt with this happened because the employees just don't give a shit.
 
NavyOffRec said:
In one of the articles, maybe the subsequent ones it said medical personnel were on hand rendering aid (CPR), I can understand if a admin person, or a non medical person was the only one around, but it was a hospital for god sakes.
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So that means he was in cardiac arrest, which means if the doc stopped administering CPR for 5 minutes to carry him to the ER, the patient would be brain dead upon arrival.
 
Spekkio said:
So that means he was in cardiac arrest, which means if the doc stopped administering CPR for 5 minutes to carry him to the ER, the patient would be brain dead upon arrival.
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I will say that he very well have not made it even if he had dropped in the ER, but there would still be a pause in CPR when moving onto gurney, loading in ambulance, etc. They still could have put him on a gurney (which evidently was available) and done CPR while moving him, it may have not been very effective, but having had to perform CPR twice I can tell you anything helps.

What would have been the best option is if people from the ER had come over with supplies needed, if the medical personnel on hand followed training they shocked him with an AED multiple times, if that doesn't work then you have to really step it up.
 
NavyOffRec said:
I will say that he very well have not made it even if he had dropped in the ER, but there would still be a pause in CPR when moving onto gurney, loading in ambulance, etc. They still could have put him on a gurney (which evidently was available) and done CPR while moving him, it may have not been very effective, but having had to perform CPR twice I can tell you anything helps.
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Well, I think that's best left up to the judgement of the doc, who was on scene. Lifting a patient onto a gurney for a few seconds is not the same as stopping CPR for 5 minutes to take a walk, and the flight BSN in the comments of the BuzzFeed story says that if the patient needs CPR, it's inappropriate to transport him anywhere until he has a pulse.

The original article posted paints a picture of everyone staring at an unconscious old man waiting for an ambulence to arrive to take him 500 yds next door because hospital procedures said so, the staff are mindless drones who don't think, and let's also remind everyone that the VA was recently under investigation so they think that they automatically think the policy is borked.

What actually happened was a man succumbed to cardiac arrest and died while receiving CPR from a doctor, which is unfortunate but apparently was the appropriate action to take. However, that's not as juicy as painting a picture of incompetence and apathy.

What would have been the best option is if people from the ER had come over with supplies needed, if the medical personnel on hand followed training they shocked him with an AED multiple times, if that doesn't work then you have to really step it up.
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I agree that someone coming with an AED is the best chance this guy has, but the Fox News article said it's unknown whether one was on hand at the time.
 
Spekkio said:
Well, I think that's best left up to the judgement of the doc, who was on scene. Lifting a patient onto a gurney for a few seconds is not the same as stopping CPR for 5 minutes to take a walk, and the flight BSN in the comments of the BuzzFeed story says that if the patient needs CPR, it's inappropriate to transport him anywhere until he has a pulse.
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I would defer to medical personnel on this one, the 2 I worked on the medical personnel that I was assisting did end up moving both without a pulse, one to the ambulance, one to the ambulance and then the helo, both did live, the one had the heart start up in the helo, the other not until we arrived in the hospital and the doc was able to administer some of those drugs they have.

Spekkio said:
The original article posted paints a picture of everyone staring at an unconscious old man waiting for an ambulence to arrive to take him 500 yds next door because hospital procedures said so, the staff are mindless drones who don't think, and let's also remind everyone that the VA was recently under investigation so they think that they automatically think the policy is borked.
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Given my experience well, lets just say I don't need the article to paint that picture.

Spekkio said:
What actually happened was a man succumbed to cardiac arrest and died while receiving CPR from a doctor, which is unfortunate but apparently was the appropriate action to take. However, that's not as juicy as painting a picture of incompetence and apathy.


I agree that someone coming with an AED is the best chance this guy has, but the Fox News article said it's unknown whether one was on hand at the time.
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If the doc is there and working on him saying not to move him that is one thing, I would like to have heard from the people there, I would like to hear the docs on scene going "we did CPR, we shocked him, we utilized all lifesaving efforts", that might give me some faith in the people that work there.

If there was not an AED close that is another issue and black eye for the VA, I can't think of any place I have been recently were I haven't either seen an AED or seen a sign saying "AED located at"
 
If the doc is there and working on him saying not to move him that is one thing, I would like to have heard from the people there, I would like to hear the docs on scene going "we did CPR, we shocked him, we utilized all lifesaving efforts", that might give me some faith in the people that work there.
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I would, too. We don't have all the information, that's the point. We know a doc was there and administering CPR, so I would like to think that he was doing what he felt was medically proper to take care of the patient. For better or worse, I don't think the VA is going to let the doc who was there talk to the press.

I would defer to medical personnel on this one...
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Absolutely...I'm with you, I'm just pointing out that there are trained medical professionals who think it would be a bad idea to attempt to move the patient on a gurney for 4 minutes in lieu of administering CPR, and it's possible that the doc on scene had the same opinion.

All in all, the shock value of a patient dying in a hospital cafeteria makes for a good headline, but at the end of the day we have a 71 year old man who died of cardiac arrest. Like you said several posts ago, doesn't matter if he was in the ER itself, his odds weren't very good of making it.
 
As Spekkio has mentioned, there's lots of important info not addressed in the news report. The hospital where I practice is on a university campus with lots of buildings, we don't send our hospital code blue (medical emergency response) team to buildings that aren't physically attached to the hospital. We depend on the medical people on duty in the building and our local EMS service. There's valid reasons for that I won't get into here, but one point mentioned above is true - if the guy was in cardiac arrest and receiving CPR, then a stretcher and likely an ALS ambulance would be necessary to transport him with CPR in progress. in looking at the times, we also don't know if some of that time represents resuscitation tasks (intubation, defibrillation) done at the scene before moving him, which is likely - and the right thing to do - if paramedics & physicians are on the scene.

I do hope an AED was nearby and used. Although medical literature has always supported AED's, I used to think that AED's were expensive technology with little benefit until I saved a man's life with one about a year ago at a gate in O'Hare airport (for medical people on the board: sudden cardiac arrest, v-fib - AED had an LCD monitor on it so I could see the whole thing - converted to sinus rhythm with one shock & has ROSC before CFD paramedics arrived). So I am now a major advocate for AED's.

The VA will do a full - and very thorough - root cause analysis (RCA) of this event and if there are things to be corrected, they will do it. The RCA won't be released but given the public and media interest I'm guessing there will be some followup information reported to the public.
 
NUFO06 said:
The VA also declared a veteran dead and told his family, but when the wife went to say goodbye she found out he was still very much alive.

http://www.wtsp.com/story/news/weir...ad-by-va-hospital-is-actually-alive/12771125/
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A couple of ways this could happen - none of which are acceptable.

This happens at non-VA hospitals as well. Fortunately it's extremely rare. When it happens usually at first the family is just happy that their loved one is actually alive. After that wears off in an hour or so, they pretty quickly get really pissed off and lose confidence in the hospital/doctors/etc, which it looks like happened here. I can't tell from the few details in the news story how it actually happened.

One of the strangest cases I've seen is a man was found unconscious outside in very cold weather here, was thought to be dead by police who called the county coroner. The coroner & his people came out, agreed he was dead & did started their investigation. During that time, the ambulance which was to be used to take the body to the morgue showed up and the paramedic discovered that the patient was still alive. Took him to hospital, he survived, etc.

Huge embarrassment for coroner, who is supposed to be the final arbiter if you're dead or not.
 
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