Some time late at night last night I have come across Why Hotels Resist Having Defibrillators in WSJ. Ha! It never occured to me that if i go into cardiac arrest in a fancy hotel of the Unites States of America, the hotel staff will just stand around, “is she dead yet?” lawfully waiting for the paramedics to arrive.
Is it me, or the hotels’ concerns are ridiculous?
“Our goal is to make sure guests in medical distress are treated by trained personnel, such as EMTs or paramedics”
Hmmm… Swimming pools across the country manage to go by for years now with a whole bunch of trained 18 year olds performing CPR, but the hotels can’t train their personnel? Ridiculous! It must be a money issue, since it costs whole $105 to train one person and $45 to maintain that training with American Red Cross, which I hear is at the top plank of this business, both in training and pricing.
Hotels worry that if they have the devices, which cost about $1,200 to $2,000 each, they could be sued for failing to have enough units, failing to put them in the right places, or failing to replace batteries or maintain them properly.
18 year old lifeguards at the pools must have at least twice the IQ and common sense of the hotel managers since they can place units in the right places and replace batteries. Again, I suspect a money issue here, since placing 1 AED on each floor might make the multimillion Marriott go bankrupt. <tear>
I am very upset that the hotels did not whine about the difficulty of using an AED.
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CPR/AED class. Section on AED. Reenactment.
Instructor: this is an AED. You turn it on, and listen to the instructions that the machines gives you. Now practice.
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I love this country.