Unfortunately, you may simply have witnessed poor CPR. It is not uncommon for ED Staff to perform poorly under pressure that professional EMSer's flourish under.
I have brought a few PT's into the ED while performing CPR, and usually a competent team of doctors and nurses who train for these scenarios is waiting, and the situation is well handled.
Unfortunately, last year I brought in a COPD pt on O2 (as per NYC protocol and our medical control with whom I verified afterwards) and the nurses left the pt on O2. withim 15 minutes or so the pt went into resp then cardiac arrest. Myself and my bls partner watched the ER doctor with 3 nurses attempt to run the code. The ER doc was more nervous and panicky than a rookie on his first major trauma. The nurses were doing such a poor job of cpr that i turned to my partner and said, "we could do better treatment doing bls cpr, than they are doing with a doctor." He nodded his head.
We did not intervene, not that they would have let us. And they called it. I was furious, and wrote a letter to the head of my agency, who forwarded it to the head of the hospital.
Nothing came of it, as far as I can tell, but I tried to do something to make up for the piss-poor job the ED staff did working the code. Now i dont bring really bad patients there anymore.
Morale of the story: some ED staff: Doctors, nurses, CNAs, etc will be great @ what they do, and some will be really bad. Like in every group, there are always the good and the bad performers. Which hospital in your area has more "good" than "bad" on there staff?
