Bystander: She’s apneic and has no pulse! I’m beginning CPR!
Commences compressions
Patient: Uh actually I have a boyfriend
I think the average person can tell what’s going on if they see someone prone on the ground and someone doing chest compressions.
You would think that, right? But no. If you’re a guy, you automatically think of all the ways you can get accused of SA, even when you’re genuinely trying to help. So most guys just don’t. It’s not worth the risk.
Conversely, we had a call for a woman passed out in a car called in by a bystander. We arrived and she was still seated in the car, with a man doing one-armed compressions on her chest. It looked bad … until we got closer and saw she was both awake and speaking normally to her “savior”, and his CPR was on the level of “movie CPR”.
We figured he would stop on his own once he realized she was awake: he didn’t. We figured she would in some way indicated he needed to stop, or at least react adversely in any way to the man pushing (weakly) on her chest … she didn’t. We had to tell him to stop.
To his credit I think he just saw someone down and got tunnel vision. Based on his face the realization of how absurd it was hit a few seconds later.
