Elder Care Nurse Refuses To Perform CPR On Collapsed Elderly Woman
This woman should not be in the business of helping people.
The elderly woman died while surrounded by supposedly trained medical personnel who insist they were following procedure and are refusing to even apologize for letting a woman die in front of them.
Dramatic 9-1-1 Call: Nurse Refuses To Perform CPR On Collapsed Elderly Woman: LAist
The last few minutes of the phone call were transcribed by KGET:
Dispatcher: We need to get CPR started.
Nurse: Yeah, we can't do CPR.
Dispatcher: Then hand the phone to the passerby. If you can't do it, I need, hand the phone to the passerby, I'll have her do it. Or if you've got any civic citizens there, I'll have them do it.
Nurse: No, no, it's not …
Dispatcher: Anybody there can do CPR. Give them the phone, please. I understand if your facility is not willing to do that. Give the phone to that passerby, that stranger...this woman is not breathing enough. She's going to die if we don't get this started. Do you understand?
Nurse: I understand. I am a nurse. But I cannot have our other senior citizens who don't know CPR do it…
Dispatcher: I will instruct them.
Nurse: we're in a dining room
Dispatcher: I will instruct them. Is there anyone there who will …
Nurse: I can't do that...
Dispatcher: Okay. I don't understand why you're not willing to help this patient
Nurse: I am but, I'm just saying that...
Dispatcher: Okay, I'll walk you through it all. EMS takes the liability for this, Colleen. I'm happy to help you, OK? This is EMS protocol.
Nurse (to someone at the facility): Can you get (unintelligible) right away? I don't know where he is. But she's yelling at me and saying we have to have one of our other residents perform CPR. I'm feeling stressed and I'm not going to do that, make that call.
. . .
Dispatcher: We can't wait. She can't wait right now. She is stopping breathing. She can't wait for them to get there.
Nurse: She's taken three breaths.
Dispatcher: It's not enough. We need to get CPR started.
Nurse: He's saying we don't. So you can talk to my boss. I don't know what to say.
Dispatcher (to another dispatcher): They're refusing CPR. They're going let her die. By the facility. Yeah.
Nurse: When will the fire department be here? When will the ambulance be here?
Dispatcher: They're coming as quick...they've been on the way all this time. But we can't wait. This lady is going to die.
Nurse: Yeah.
. . .
