Great job, both to the young lady and to those who trained her

Missouri teen saves 11-month-old baby in Walmart with CPR

Abby Snodgrass, 17, was in the High Ridge, Mo., Walmart when she heard a commotion. She ran over and performed CPR on a baby who had stopped breathing and most likely saved the child. She learned the life-saving procedure in health class.

You don't see much in the way of heartwarming or good stories in the news these days, so I was glad to see this. Apparently the local emergency personnel have been teaching every high school student in their district CPR since last year, and will have taught about 600 young people by year's end. What a great programme! I took CPR years ago, but haven't kept up on the latest techniques at all, and I gather it's changed a lot. I should check into getting a refresher at work. I'm not one of the people required to maintain CPR-certification, but it never hurts to know what to do.

Some heartwarming news for a change

(and from Florida, of all places. the land where they shoot you dead for the stupidest of reasons):

Drama on the expressway: Drivers scramble to save unconscious baby on 836

It was a sight that jarred motorists on the busy Dolphin Expressway.

Westbound traffic suddenly came to a standstill around 2:30 p.m. Thursday, and a woman sprang from her car, holding a baby, screaming for help.

Pamela Rauseo, 37, of West Kendall, quickly got that help for her 5-month-old nephew, little Sebastian de la Cruz, who was turning blue.

Rauseo said she was in a panic, thinking she could not let anything happen to the baby while in her care.

“My sister had trusted me with him,” she told reporters.

Drivers stuck in 836 traffic just east of 57th Avenue swung into action.

I cannot imagine calmly refusing to help someone to the point where they die

just because of a living centre's policy.

Refusal to Give CPR to Elderly Woman Probed by Police

This is definitely one for the ethicists, but in my mind, unless you know someone has a Do Not Resuscitate order, no matter what kind of facility you are in, if you are trained, you should help, and if you're not trained, you can follow a 911 dispatcher's directions, and policy be damned. Granted, the chances of the elderly lady living were very slim, but to stand by and refuse to help, calmly quoting policy? That's pretty cold. Also, this story says that it wasn't a nurse who was on the line, as was first reported, but in the 911 call I heard, the woman identified herself as a nurse. So I wonder where the confusion on that lies. Anyway, I think some policies are going to be reviewed, not only there but around the country, for these independent living centres. I'm sure these policies are some way to dodge liability, but I don't see how refusing to help does that. If anything, it makes a facility more culpable of death.