EMTs suspended as officials look into allegations they refused to help pregnant woman who later died

[RamboLiberal]

Two city emergency medical technicians were suspended without pay Monday while officials investigate accusations they refused to help a pregnant Brooklyn woman who collapsed in front of them and later died.

Jason Green, 32, and Melissa Jackson, 23, were suspended after witnesses said they callously walked out with their bagels and said "Call 911" instead of trying to help Eutisha Revee Rennix, who was gasping for air while sprawled on a coffee shop floor on Dec. 9.

Green and Jackson - who FDNY sources said are dating - work in the Emergency Medical Service dispatch center in the Metrotech complex, and their offices are directly above the Au Bon Pain where Rennix worked.

"We've known them for years," said Au Bon Pain employee Tareen Brown, 29. "We thought they'd do something ... they said there was nothing they could do."



Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2009/12/22/2009-12-22_call_911_emts_are_suspended.html#ixzz0aRAWH0Zq

[NJmaverick]

1. As an EMT myself I can tell you how helpless I feel with out my ambulance and equipment

still, they were wrong to just not even make an effort to do what they could. Odds are it wouldn't have changed the outcome, but to just walk away is just so cold and callous

[bobburgster]

2. Probably had no insurance......

seriously though, that's sick!

[HipChick]

3. I read that they were dispatchers..no patient contact in years..

[Warpy]

7. Well, that explains a hell of a lot.

That would mean they had nothing with them.

[Ikonoklast]

4. WTF?????????????

What exactly did these two think their job is?

Must have been terrible for them to have their break interrupted by a medical emergency.

At least make the call for the poor woman.

Don't like it?

QUIT YOUR JOB.

Get one that involves wearing a paper hat, and a deep fryer.

[Hassin Bin Sober]

5. I hope the two assholes get fired.

[Vinca]

8. I hope they're charge with manslaughter . . . at the very least.

[Hassin Bin Sober]

11. That would be a stretch.

[unblock]

21. you're kidding, right?

get an emt license and suddenly anyone who sneezes in your vicinity owns your services?
and the emt gets no pay and all the legal liability?

taking on a patient and THEN abandoning them is horrendous and criminal.

but refusing to take a patient on has to be permissible, especially when the trained professional doesn't have equipment or legal protection or the case is in the system. or for that matter, good, recent experience in that particular job. dispatchers dispatch, field emts go in the field. they have very different skill sets.

[skygazer]

27. They do have legal protection

They're called good samaritan laws and they are designed to protect people who attempt to administer aid in an emergency.

[Vinca]

28. That has nothing to do with people who wilfully decide not to administer aid,

even though they are fully qualified to do so. I'd love to be the lawyer for the family in this case.

[unblock]

29. good samaritan laws vary from state to state, but none REQUIRE anyone to render aid

at least i've never heard of such a thing and can't fathom it, at least not where it places requirements on emts above and beyond what it places on anyone else in the vicinity.

merely having a license should not mean you are legally obligated, on pain of imprisonment, to be on call under all circumstances in all situations without pay.


oh and another thought, dispatchers save lives when they're at their phones. if they were on break what happens if they're short-staffed when they fail to return from break? that could cause some other emergency to go unserved or underserved. the thought that in an emergency, a dispatcher should do what a dispatcher does, and get field emts to the scene, is not unreasonable at all.


say there's a bank robbery and someone the bank workers knew was a police officer happened to be there (not in uniform) but he had a desk job and hadn't walked a beat in years didn't try to disarm the robber. do you want that police officer to go to prison as an accomplice? of course not.

police officers are never legally required to get involved in any particular incident, especially not if they weren't dispatched to the scene.

firefighters are never legally required to get involved in any particular fire, especially not if they weren't dispatched to the scene.

but throw the emts in prison if they don't get involved? and what's the threshold for action, should they be required to render first aid to anyone who gets a scraped knee?

[Warpy]

6. Lots of questions here

which is why I'm glad they're investigating.

Were they ducking in for bagels and a quick pee before they went on a scheduled non emergency run?

Was their rig really close by, close enough for them to grab emergency equipment? If they did non emergency transport (such as dialysis patients or patients returning to a nursing home) did they even have advanced life support equipment in that rig? Some do, some don't, the equipment is expensive. There was little they could do without it.

If she was gasping, she was breathing. While it would have been far more prudent to stand by in case she stopped breathing until the other team showed up, what do regulations say about that? How far out was the other team?

While their poor judgment has caused a PR nightmare, some questions do need to be asked before they're fired and guillotined.

[Hassin Bin Sober]

10. They didn't have a rig. They were working upstairs in the same bldg, as dispatchers.

The article doesn't say but they may or may not been on a meal break.

Either way, they were trained EMTs and should have stayed until help arrived. Either to provide CPR or at least help calm the woman down.

[NJmaverick]

16. According to the article they were dispatchers

which means no rig (or bus as they call it in NYC) and no runs.

[Gwendolyn]

9. I guess it would have been a much better story if one of them had stuck a straw in her

throat and given her an instant tracheotomy. Or applied some other magical treatment that you see emergency personnel perform every week on teevee. It's kind of disgusting that they didn't stick around but if there was truly nothing they could do, being dispatchers and not having any equipment with them, then the outcome would likely have been the same. Probably worse than the behavior of these two, is the lack of equipment on the bus of those charged with responding.

I think those who live in the city are pretty jaded about the system as it is anyway.

[hayu_lol]

13. Seems like a lot of info is not yet available...

if they were non-active EMTs, on a coffee break and with no equipment or current skills or licensing, they could have been held responsible had they attempted to help. Yes, they could have called 9-11 but had the problem already been called in?

Lot of unknowns.

[Gwendolyn]

15. They're being blamed for the woman's death, even though that's a big stretch.

You're right, there are a lot of unkowns, but once these stories hit the news, a scapegoat must be found instantly.

[unblock]

12. my own training as an emt would have told me to leave as well.

though in fact i would have stayed and tried to help as best i could, most likely by trying to get things like identification and a history from co-workers.

they train emts about the laws in such matters -- known as "no good deed goes unpunished". in most states, if an emt took on a patient without having been dispatched, they can face PERSONAL liability for an adverse outcome if you failed to perform to the standard of an emt. since they were not there officially then their employer would likely NOT protect them.

some states have "good samaritan" laws that protect ordinary laypeople who try to help, but usually these do now apply to people who present themselves or are known to have medical training.


moreover, one of the first things they tell emts about ANY SCENE it to protect YOURSELF. "dead or injured emts cannot save lives." one of the first things an emt does at any scene is to put on gloves to protect themselves. cpr is never performed "mouth-to-mouth", it's always done with a bag-valve-mask (which is also MUCH easier!) without a bvm, they couldn't perform cpr, and therefore would be of very limited help directly to the patient.

that said, again, they could have gotten identification and a history and therefore expedited the real emts that 911 eventually dispatched. they could have done this without actually taking on the patient and therefore wouldn't have any legal liability.

[Warpy]

14. I'm an RN and agree

although CPR without ventilation has been shown to be quite effective, almost as good as CPR with ventilation. It's a challenge to do it on a pregnant woman but not impossible. Still, there's damned little you can do without advanced life support equipment right there, especially when you've had no patient contact for years, see upthread. Their CPR certification might not even have been current, voiding any Samaritan law.

Still, I might have stayed to see if she could gasp out a history, allergies, contact number.

[NJmaverick]

20. You can't maintain your EMT certification with out a current CPR card

[NJmaverick]

17. I'm an EMT and I remember the whole big lecture on patient abandonment

like it or not when you are in that situation you have yourself a patient. You are in uniform you are a certifed EMT and someone in distress has directly asked for assistance. The ONLY correct action is to help, period end of story.

[unblock]

24. i've never heard of a uniform for dispatchers.

an i SPECIFICALLY remember from the big lecture in patient abandonment that refusing to take a patient on is the most prudent action from a legal perspective. patient abandonment happens ONLY after you've accepted a patient.

merely being nearby is NOT accepting a patient.

[RamboLiberal]

18. They were likely on the clock for NYC

I would assume as EMT's the city would've supported them. Looks like now they could very well lose their jobs over the outrage. IMHO at least they could've stayed and did whatever they could if only to take info or talk to the 911 operator till EMT's with rig & equipment got there.

[rucky]

22. Sounds like they're facing personal liability now.

[unblock]

25. no, they're facing public backlash.

their employer is suspending them and investigating party as a pr move and party to investigate the incident, e.g., so they can determine if the dispatchers did or did not accept the patient or otherwise violate any laws or terms of their employment.

we don't yet have the details and we don't yet know the outcome. but if the story is as reported, i very much doubt that a civil lawsuit against them would get anywhere.

[Warpy]

26. Extremely doubtful

When someone that young goes that quickly, you can bet it was catastrophic and would probably have had the same outcome if it had happened on a stretcher in an ER.

[LynneSin]

19. My mother was so lucky a random EMT that happened to be driving nearby saw her fall

She was walking down rickity old porch steps that did not have any handles she could to help balance her walk down. When she lost her balance and fell down the steps, smacked her face into the pavement, she was very fortunate that an off-duty EMT was driving by and saw what happened. He pulled over and tended to her while the ambulances were coming.

I highly doubt my mother would have died from the fall but she was badly bruised in and needed dental work done to fix the damage that was done to her teeth.

It's a shame those 2 EMT didn't have the same work ethics.

[Generic Other]

23. In Washington state we have a "good samaritan" law

They would be charged with failing to provide assistance. It is sad when our fear of lawsuits is greater than our willingness to render aid to others.

I guess we expect too much of EMT's.

[RamboLiberal]

30. DA Probing EMTs Accused of Refusing Aid

(AP) The Brooklyn District Attorney's office is looking into the actions of two emergency medical technicians accused of refusing to help a pregnant woman who collapsed in the coffee shop where they were taking a break.

A spokesman for the office said Monday it was investigating to see if any laws were broken.

-----

Ritea said that all FDNY members "take an oath to assist others whenever they're in need of emergency medical care. It's their sworn duty."

A union spokesman said Monday that EMTs generally consider their jobs to be a 24-hour kind of thing.

"Our people tend to spring into action whether they're on duty, off duty, whatever they're doing," said Robert Ungar, spokesman for the Uniformed EMTS and Paramedics, FDNY.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/12/22/national/main6009430.shtml?tag=stack