What are the legalities involved here? If you attempt to help are you opening yourself up to potential blame and legal action? What about DNR wishes the person may or may not have, or religious beliefs?
Nobody wants to live in a world where people find a dying person laying on the floor and let him die because they're afraid of legal issues. The law protects you from such nonsense.
Even if it didn't, in my opinion, no person worth a damn would allow that consideration to color their response.
A few months ago there was an incident in China where a young girl was run over by a truck while crossing a street. Nobody stepped in to help, precisely because they were afraid of the legal consequences. The entire thing was recorded on video, and it got a lot of exposure. It was horrific, the kind of thing one wishes you had never seen or heard about.
On the other hand, and thankfully this was a much minor event, my wife once got a traffic ticket for moving her car a few meters past a red light in order to make room for an ambulance. Something like that is enough to make you think twice.
Can't speak about China, but most states in the US have laws to protect people with the proper training from legal exposure (for example if you're giving proper CPR and break a patient's ribs). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Samaritan_law#United_State...
I just watched it, after googling for it. As a dad, I'm sick and want to go home and hug my kids. I can't understand how these people lost their humanity, but I've certainly lost mine towards them.
Counterpoint and proviso: know what the hell you are doing. It's easily possible to do more harm than good if you don't know better.
For example, whenever a motorcyclist gets into a crash, people get the bright idea that they need to get the helmet off. No, the helmet is bracing their neck, which may very well be badly injured, so sometimes if you just pull it off, now the guy's a quadriplegic, and since you were just "trying to help", the law shields you from legal responsibility even though you just crippled someone for life.
The helmet must be removed for unconscious injured. If the person is fully able to respond you should leave the helmet on unless asked otherwise, but you must remove the helmet when the injured looses consciousness. Not taking the helmet of may have the injured die of blood or puke inhaled or just his tongue blocking respiration. So you're damned if you do and more damned if you don't.
Be careful when you remove the helmet, always remove glasses first, open the helmet and pull carefully straight "upwards". Keep the spine straight. Just before you completely remove the helmet use one hand to support the head, so it doesn't bump down. If there's a second person to help, one supports the neck and the other one pulls.
Just refresh your first aid class and do the best you can. It's in pretty much all cases better than no first aid.
Better yet, become a trained first responder yourself. And urge your family members and colleagues (and anyone you spend significant amounts of time with) to do so as well.
By the time a trained rescuer arrives, the biker is dead or has massive brain damage from oxygen loss. So whatever you do can only be better than doing nothing.
I agree with that, but in the specific case of AEDs it's hard to get something badly wrong to the extent that you actively harm: the main failure case is not doing something properly that could've been done. So you should definitely yield to someone who has better training, if available. But if there isn't such a person available, the AEDs thesmelves are completely automated and intended to be used by non-experts (experts use EDs that aren't fully automated): they sample the heart signal for several kinds of situations that can be corrected by defibrillation, and then apply the right one if detected. They won't fire at all if they're not placed correctly and/or if it isn't one of the situations where defibrillation would help, so you can't accidentally give someone the wrong kind of shock that makes the situation worse.
I heard from a guy (not Chinese national but married to one) who lives in China saying that in China, don't help anyone having accident on the street. He said there are many cases where when you help, you end up paying the bills because the person (or his/her family) would tell hospital that you cause the accident. Simply because they don't have money.
EDIT: He added that if you do want to help, make sure you have witnesses that you're trying to help.
Basically, you are immune from liability unless you either: 1) are a licensed professional acting within the scope of your employment, in which case normal professional liability rules would apply; or 2) do something that a court finds grossly negligent.
Unfortunately, it may cost you quite a bit of time and money to convince said court that what you did was not grossly negligent should someone press the issue.
Good Samaritan laws cover a layperson attempting to do good (so long as you're not doing something a reasonable person would realize to be actively harmful).
In most states, "ignoring" a DNR order is covered similarly. Point of interest:
Even as an EMS provider, with a patient who has a valid and active POLST (Physician's Orders on Life Sustaining Treatment - a more detailed DNR, that offers advice on comfort measures, intubation, and the like) - if the family wants heroic measures (CPR, etc), then we are required to do so (though my personal moral and ethical compass has issues with this).
