Sued for doing CPR?

[Capman]

I searched the heck out of this and could not produce anything. I believe this may be another dose of EMS folklore.

Additionally, OP makes no mention of cardiac leads. There is also no mention of combo pads in which exposing would be necessary.

Mshow, cardiac leads may not require exposing, but for a code, I would be using combo/defib pads first. Even if you placed cardiac leads first and identified a shock able rhythm you still need to expose for the defib pads.

I'm sticking with Mshow on this one... "Urban Legend".

[Michael]

If this was in the news in the present century, my search engines need CPR.

[firedoc5]

Maybe the law suit isn't for doing CPR, but how it was done, exposing the chest.

Personally I've only had one complaint of doing CPR/ reviving a patient. Usually when we had a "save" we'd follow up on them from time to time. We'd visit them while they were in ICU/CCU or just after they were sent to the floor. But we saw this gentleman while he was still in ICU. He thanked us and all, but he asked if there was another way of doing it because his chest hurt so bad.

"Thanks for saving my life, but man, you made my chest hurt", is how the patient phrased it.

[spenac]

If it is true it is a totally BS lawsuit. If I remove your clothes in order to save your life, I think you can get over the embarrassment of someone seeing your nipples. Have you ever noticed when doing real "life saving" you don't notice anything about whether your patients "hot" or not. Surely the patient lost if it was true. I mean holy crap did her boobs end up bouncing on u tube during CPR. Get over it, your alive. But again this is probably just another unproven EMS myth.

[firedoc5]

If it is true it is a totally BS lawsuit. If I remove your clothes in order to save your life, I think you can get over the embarrassment of someone seeing your nipples. Have you ever noticed when doing real "life saving" you don't notice anything about whether your patients "hot" or not. Surely the patient lost if it was true. I mean holy crap did her boobs end up bouncing on u tube during CPR. Get over it, your alive. But again this is probably just another unproven EMS myth.

I agree it's BS.

Unfortunately I had a boss that would notice. On more than one occasion when there were more than one patient brought in, he would refer to a certain pt. as "The one with the great rack." or " The one with a great figure." He'd been "called on the carpet" for it, but he was the boss/owner of the service, so nothing ever came of it.

He's was one person I just could not totally get along with.

[Richard B the EMT]

The story sounds like the Urban or EMS Legend (choose either) of the man sued the EMTs or Paramedics who saved his life, because they ripped his $300.00 Italian silk shirt while doing it.

[weh2957]

If you are a first responder on the scene you should be able to find landmarks without removing shirt. Unless and AED is present then you have to make sure that there is no nitro patches etc before placing AED pad. We should show that patient is not flaunted in front of everyone but we have to do our job.

[firedoc5]

The story sounds like the Urban or EMS Legend (choose either) of the man sued the EMTs or Paramedics who saved his life, because they ripped his $300.00 Italian silk shirt while doing it.

That's been on TV and movies how many times?

[DwayneEMTP]

There is an overly kind poster that sometimes accuses me of being modest, but I have to believe there are times, like this one, that I'm simply truly not as smart as many.

Are we really talking about finding landmarks through clothing on a dead person to avoid offending the modesty of said....dead person? See, I'm not that smart. Dead means a lot of things need to happen quickly in my world. CPR, airway management, Monitor, vascular access, etc. And I don't have the brains to cause, direct and monitor those things while making sure some middle aged perv. doesn't get a peek at a 16 y/o tit.

We had an Afg local that fell through a ceiling 12 feet onto a concrete floor. On the way down he slashed his face on a piece of ductwork from the R corner of his mouth to the corner of his R ear. Not full thickness (which I didn't know at first of course) but you could see the shape of his teeth on the remaining tissue when the wound was exposed...perhaps one layr of tissue remained.

While I did my 'medic thang' I ordered his clothes cut off. If you don't know, Afg men (I have no contact with Afg women who I assume feel the same, but I don't know for a fact) have a MAJOR issue with being exposed in public. When we started to cut his pants he started to freak out...puking, bleeding, freaking out, he was a busy fellow. Someone higher up in my medical chain of command was yelling that "You can't expose him in public!" The medic cutting looked at me, I yelled "Get his clothes off!!" and soon he was naked with the exception of a piece of t-shirt covering his penis when we could manage it.

Turns out that when I looked at his buttox it appeared that someone had slipped a very large bagel under the skin at the base of his lumbar spine. Would I have found it with his pants on? Yeah, probably. But I found it sooner, with much better visualization than I would have had had I simply palped or "peeked" under his pants as I see many do. I believe the MOI dictated exposure of the entire pt, and did so despite his complaints and that of a medical superior (in rank, not clear if intelligence).

Anyway, I guess my point is this. If you can do good medicine while keeping the rules of prudence in mind, then kudos to you. I simply don't seem to have the capacity to do so...So fair warning girls...if you decide to keel over in front of this dumb ol' fat medic...pray you've been working out and wore clean underwear.

Dwayne

[firedoc5]

If you are just out and around in public and you witness an accident or someone go down you are absolutely going to help them. In that situation you're not going to start removing clothing immediately right then and there. Sure, if it's a girl/female you can "peek" under the shirt and hopefully be able to unfasten or cut her bra with a pocket knife or something to get it out of the way. It is easy to find the xiphoid process through a blouse or shirt if you have to start CPR. Hopefully you would eventually have one or two people jump in to help. But wouldn't it be better to wait until the EMS crew get's there before actually removing clothing? Besides, if you do find something under the clothing it's likely that you can't do much of anything about it until EMS arrives. Once EMS arrives, by all means start to expose. But you can still be somewhat discreet. If there's a few people around ask if they would be willing to hold sheets up around. We had done that many times.

One thing that always amused me is how some Medics makes sure they cut up the seam of jeans so they can be resown back. Not me. Forget the seamstress and just cut where it's most accessible.

But the ideal way is that once EMS is there, hopefully you can package them if need be and load. You don't necessarily have to "load & go", you can still treat what you can at the scene, but at least you would not be watched by the "Oh My God, Squad". Like I said, that's the ideal way, but how often do you have the option of an "ideal" way?