A North Vancouver lifeguard who helped revive a man in the throes of cardiac arrest received the Vital Link award from the B.C. Ambulance Service last Wednesday.
Lauren Millar, 23, was minding the pool at William Griffin recreation centre last November when she was hurriedly called into the gym.
We were called into the gym thinking someone was bleeding, she recalled.
Millar soon discovered a 30-year-old man changing colour on the gym floor.
Patrons had gotten him onto his back and had noticed he was going blue, she said.
The man had been on an exercise bike when he went into cardiac arrest and tumbled unconscious to the floor, according to Millar.
Its definitely overwhelming, Millar said of the situation.
Millar, who is in her second year of a three-year nursing program at BCIT, gave the dying man mouth-to-mouth resuscitation while two gym patrons administered chest compressions.
Seeing the man was not recovering, Millar grabbed a defibrillator.
This was my first time using it, Millar said. Ive done training in it for years, but never had to actually use it.
After determining the patients heartbeat constituted a shockable rhythm, Millar used the automated external defibrillator.
Paramedics arrived on the scene shortly after Millar shocked the patient,
Before he left our facility he was breathing and talking to us again, Millar said. He was pretty out of it, but he could tell us his name.
Millar, who works one day a week at the pool, said she returned to her duties after helping save the patient.
The following day, the mans parents visited William Griffin.
We heard from his parents that he was doing fine in the hospital, she said.
Despite what Millar called the quiet chaos of the moment, she said the people at William Griffin helped her remain as calm as possible.
Its just nice to have a good base of people around to help with the situation, but it was definitely an adrenaline moment.
A cardiac arrest victim is four times more likely to survive if they receive cardio pulmonary resuscitation from a bystander. However, in approximately 85 per cent of all cardiac arrest cases, this basic procedure is not performed.
Even with the best-trained paramedics and the fastest response times, the simple actions of members of the public in the first moments of a medical emergency can be one of the most critical factors in a patients outcome, stated B.C. Ambulance Service superintendent Bruce Harford in a release.
