OK, for the handful of you who actually read this blog, I’ll bet you’ll do everything you can to save someone’s life.  And who knows, you might even go to truly dangerous lengths in your attempt to do so.

Some people go through training in order to prepare for the eventuality they may be called upon to save a life, and some of those people actually expect the need to arise.  They feel prepared.  They feel ready.

And then they, as you would, try their best, using the skills they learned.

But it doesn’t always work out for various reasons, and the reason here is, well, I don’t have a word for it at the moment.

A truly tragic for all involved, the story is here.

It will be a long time dealing with it, I’m sure, for a lifeguard.

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I’ve received the following information from Ambulance Driver, whose judgement and expertise in his field are well respected.  It puts a real twist/correction to the situation, though possibly not exactly a news flash in that we once again read bad information showing up in the media.  I have to wonder where the voices of “the other side” were in the inquest situation.

Here’s what AD has to say:

This is why you should take everything you read in the paper with a grain of salt.

If the girl had started breathing again, the life guard was perfectly correct in stopping CPR. It is physically impossible to have breathing without a heartbeat. Your heart can beat for several minutes after your breathing stops, but the opposite is not true.

I don’t know who Dr. Christopher Duke is, but his statements are irresponsible and cast serious doubt on the article’s assertion that he is a “heart expert.” CPR in the UK is taught much the same as it is in the United States. Both of them comply with the ILCOR (International Liaison Committee On Resuscitation) guidelines, which state that once adequate breathing resumes, CPR compressions are to stop and the patient placed in the recovery position - just as the lifeguard did.

We no longer teach laypeople to check for a pulse, either. Studies show that laypeople fail to detect a pulse when one is present more often than not, and over half the time think they have felt a pulse when none is there. Instead, we teach laypeople to look for “signs of spontaneous circulation,” such as coughing, spontaneous movement, or BREATHING.

Thanks, AD!