If a shopper collapses with a heart attack in a parking lot, there’s a one-in-four chance someone will do chest compressions. It’s no wonder that emergency-room physicians want people to perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation – even those untrained to do it. “There should not be any hesitation of doing it wrong,” says Christian Vaillancourt, a senior scientist at the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute. “You can only improve the situation.”
Thousands of Canadians die because bystanders do not rush to their aid. Some wrongly believe they can be held liable if the person dies. Many in older generations mistakenly believe CPR must be done perfectly to be effective.
A position paper of the Canadian Association of Emergency Room Physicians released on Thursday estimated 2,000 lives a year could be saved if bystanders did chest compressions half of the time, double what is done now.
The group wants life-saving education to be a prerequisite for a high-school diploma, and tax benefits to be given to companies that pay for their workers’ CPR training and to individuals who pay for their own training.
“We would like every Canadian to be trained in CPR,” says Dr. Vaillancourt.
The law across Canada favours for those who jump in to help in good faith. Most provinces have passed statutes – “Good Samaritan” laws or emergency medical aid acts – that protect helpful bystanders against negligence claims. For those that do not, the common law applies.
“If you do what a reasonable, average person would do,” says Bernard Dickens, professor of health law and policy at the University of Toronto, “then you wouldn’t be held liable if things go astray.”
The exception is in Quebec. There is a duty of reasonable rescue, which means everyone has a duty to act; failure to do so can lead to liability.
With 20,000 people a year across Canada suffering cardiac arrest outside hospitals, CPR should be seen as a moral duty. But, unlike in Quebec, there should be no statute-imposed obligations to perform acts of rescue. The call for help should be met with a human response – not legal coercion.
Might introduce CPR in schools as extracurricular and award those who train and pass a diploma with one star.