CPR

I recently read an article on the World Wide Web regarding an unfortunate case in which someone had collapsed at work, and a supervisor stopped a fellow employee from performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation, and now the person is dead.

As with many articles on the World Wide Web, there was a place at the end where readers could leave comments. The vast majority of the comments were very upset by the incident. Many stated that the supervisor was responsible for the death of the employee. This all occurred at a major corporation, and many stated that the corporation should be sued for the death of the employee.

Based on what was presented in the article, I agree that the supervisor was wrong to have stopped the co-worker from performing CPR. However, the comments illustrate the phenomenon that Americans wildly overestimate the effectiveness of CPR in saving a person’s life. Currently, the FACT is that CPR is truly effective somewhere between two and thirty percent of the time, depending on a variety of factors. This means that, statistically, there is a seventy to ninety-eight percent chance that the employee would have been dead even if CPR had been administered by the co-worker. The idea, voiced by many of the commenters, that the supervisor should be charged with manslaughter, or even murder, seems to be a bit of a stretch.

Then there is the commenters’ widespread notion that this major corporation should be sued for the death of the employee (based on the idea that by preventing CPR, the supervisor caused the death of the employee). Even with CPR, the employee probably would be dead, so this idea has little merit. Still, it remains true that the supervisor was wrong, and that CPR MIGHT have helped keep the employee alive. I have already discussed monetary damage awards in my earlier blog entry entitled “Damages”. Even if the supervisor WAS directly responsible for the death of the employee -- which this supervisor was NOT -- I fail to see the “correctness” of taking a large amount of money from this corporation, or from the corporation’s customers, or from all of the customers of the insurance company that insures the corporation, and giving it to the heirs of the dead employee. Fire, or even jail, the supervisor, if that is what the law deems appropriate, or perhaps punish the supervisor’s superiors, for failing to adequately train the supervisor -- but no amount of money will bring back the dead employee, and the idea that money will compensate for the death seems to me to be obscene.

As I stated in “Damages”, perhaps there could be some sort of voluntary pool into which sympathetic individuals could contribute money to go to the heirs of the dead employee. That would be fine with me.

Actually, I am a bit less sympathetic since the employee is already dead, and beyond the reach of monetary compensation. IF the employee had been left alive but disabled due to the actions of a supervisor, then monetary compensation seems more valid … but the idea that the employee’s HEIRS are now entitled to a million dollars (many commenters stated that the corporation should now be sued for millions of dollars) seems far-fetched.

Truth is complicated.