Have you helped/saved anyone while off duty?

bigjim · Nov 5, 2008

They are usually state laws. Good Samaritan is for non-health care providers, there is a different name for the one covering nurses and all, because we are held to a higher, different standard than "civilians". But I haven't heard of any states that don't have these laws.
Only reason I remember is because it was on the state boards way back when, when it was still 5 separate exams.

Many Good Samaritan laws have less protection for licensed personnel.

To quote my old Karate teacher (although he was talking about defending yourself) "We do what we have to do, but we don't necessarily stand around and hand out business cards afterwards".

Take that any way you want.

mama_d, BSN, RN · Nov 5, 2008

I've been the first on the scene three times...

First was as a new grad, pt crashed into a tree off of a parking lot. She was seizing. Everyone else was just standing there watching; I threw her car into park and turned it off. She had a diabetes med alert bracelet on but nothing in her purse to up her sugars, so I just tried to protect her from striking her head on something while we waited for EMS to get there. They responded really quickly.

Second one was on a 4th of July...there was a horrible accident at an intersection about fifty yards in front of us. A pick up truck hit a little two door and ended up flipping. I just yelled "I'll be back" at my hubby and kids and ran. I was shocked that everyone walked away from it, especially given that the two teenagers in the pick up were unrestrained.

The last one was the worst. It closed down a five lane highway for over an hour. I came up on it right after it happened. There was a little red two door car that was completely smashed on the driver's side and the front, with apparently noone in it. The car that it had stuck initially before bouncing off the median divide was a larger sedan. I just parked my car in the middle of the highway (between the two cars all lanes were blocked) and ran up to the sedan, checked to make sure they were all okay and 911 had been called. One of the gentlemen from the sedan said "We're okay, but I don't think whoever's still in that red car is." It ended up that the driver was unrestrained and ended up wedged under the dash on the passenger side, with an obviously broken leg and bleeding from several large wounds on her head. She was totally disoriented and fighting to get out despite the enormous amount of pain she was obviously in. Some guy who was built like a linebacker finally got the door open and I knelt on the pavement trying to stablize her C-spine as best as I could and talk calmly to her while she fought to get out. It took EMS and firefighters over ten minutes to get there from the time the 911 call was made. I could feel the woman's bones grinding while she fought to get out of the car...it is one of the most horrible sensations I have ever felt. To this day I have no idea what ended up happening to her. I went home shaking with my scrub jacket covered in blood. I washed down with about a gallon of Purel on the side of the highway. My husband forbade me from ever getting into that kind of situation again, but honestly, I couldn't not do it. The poor woman was going wild with pain and disorientation while literally about fifty other people just stood there doing nothing...and since I had just gotten off of work and had my scrubs on, it was obvious I was some kind of medical person.

I'll never forget how quickly EMS and the firefighters worked to get her out of the car...one of them immediately placed a C-collar on her from over my head, one slid in front of me to try and hold her still, and two of them just picked me up from behind to lift me out of the way and get whatever info I had from me. In the space of that amount of time, they also had the engine out of the car. One of the cops who responded spent about ten minutes with me making sure that I was okay to drive home. I can't imagine doing that kind of work every day; I don't think my heartrate went back to normal for a good two hours!

beachmom · Nov 12, 2008

Not as exciting as some of the others, but here goes:

A good friend called me asking me to "lance his boil" for him. He had just finished chemo. He had gone blackberry picking the day before and fell and scraped his hand.

His hand was red, very puffy and warm, a little blackish on the scrape site with a red streak a couple inches long going up his arm, and this was less than 24 hours since his scrape. I told him to go to ER right away. He didn't want to go, so I got out the big guns: I told his wife. She hadn't even seen his hand as he had it bandaged.

That night I went to work at the hospital, and he was in a neutropenic room with IV antibiotics. Whew!

Another time I was watching a 5 YO girl. Someone called me into her room, and she was purple with big saucer eyes. Years ago they taught us to do a finger sweep before using the Heimlich maneuver. Nowadays, they teach don't because you can push food further in. Luckily, I did it the old way. A finger sweep found a huge chunk of meat stuck in her throat, easy to pull out, so I didn't have to squeeze her.

Right after that I made my two teenagers take a CPR class. If I hadn't been there that night, I don't know if my kids would have helped or just called 911 which would have been too late.

northshore08 · Nov 13, 2008

One that comes to mind occurred on a two lane highway in rural NC by the coast; I happened upon a rolled Fiero (remember those tiny cars?) with nobody around. The driver was lying in the tall grass in the deep ditch beside the road. He was military and in uniform, so I had no worries about gloves; I spent a while splinting his arms with multiple fractures with my arms, since there was nothing around to splint with. He was partially conscious, not moving about much. Bleeding from a few sites, mostly on the arms. Kept him still until more help came, and was glad to give it up to a local orthopedic doc who showed up when the ambulance did. I transferred my pt's arms to the splints they supplied, checked pulses, reported off to the doc and the crew, and went to find the nearest gas station. Shoulda seen the look on the cashier's face when I showed up with bloody arms and hands asking for a place to wash!