Not really. I've only encountered dead patients twice, but they were already down.
Once, the wife and doctor were there, and the doc told us not to work up the patient. This was pretty clear-cut, and the medics with us did the right thing: got the doc to call up medical control (there's a doc on the other end), and thus with docs handshaking, we were legally covered.
By the way, it's an odd feeling to be consciously dampening your adrenaline reflex as you respond to a cardiac arrest call, consciously damp the renewed spike when you find out it really -is- a code (oftentimes, what you get called for and what you find are different), and then... not work the code.
The other was a bit surreal: man down, cardiac arrest. Amazingly, we arrive *after* the medics. That's been my only time doing actual for-real CPR. What made it surreal is that the wife had worked at Boston City Hospital as a nurse for years (both were retired), and so she knew he was down too long. The System was working -- fire, EMTs, medics were present -- it's just that The System doesn't yet involve teleporting EMS. So I was there when he was pronounced at the hospital
To end on an upbeat note, The System is starting to expand into having public portable defibrillators everywhere, which massively ups the survival rate. I think it was O'Hare airport that was studied when they installed AEDs (automated external defibrillators). They went from a survival rate of 10-20% to something like 80%.
Once, the wife and doctor were there, and the doc told us not to work up the patient. This was pretty clear-cut, and the medics with us did the right thing: got the doc to call up medical control (there's a doc on the other end), and thus with docs handshaking, we were legally covered.
By the way, it's an odd feeling to be consciously dampening your adrenaline reflex as you respond to a cardiac arrest call, consciously damp the renewed spike when you find out it really -is- a code (oftentimes, what you get called for and what you find are different), and then... not work the code.
The other was a bit surreal: man down, cardiac arrest. Amazingly, we arrive *after* the medics. That's been my only time doing actual for-real CPR. What made it surreal is that the wife had worked at Boston City Hospital as a nurse for years (both were retired), and so she knew he was down too long. The System was working -- fire, EMTs, medics were present -- it's just that The System doesn't yet involve teleporting EMS. So I was there when he was pronounced at the hospital
To end on an upbeat note, The System is starting to expand into having public portable defibrillators everywhere, which massively ups the survival rate. I think it was O'Hare airport that was studied when they installed AEDs (automated external defibrillators). They went from a survival rate of 10-20% to something like 80%.
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