A nurse couple saved a man whose heart stopped after suffering "low oxygen levels" in the middle of a flight to Baltimore, The Washington Post reported June 2.
Emily Raines, RN, and her boyfriend, Daniel Shifflett, were on their way home from vacation when a flight attendant called for any medical professionals to come to the front of the aircraft. The couple responded and found a man with a bluish-purple face near the front of the plane.
"A flight attendant was trying to do compressions, but the guy was on his chair," Mr. Shifflett, who worked as a nurse for five years before transitioning to a career in finance in 2021, told the Post. "You need to be on a flat surface. Otherwise, the compressions aren't going to do anything."
The couple carried the man into the aisle and began chest compressions. Ms. Raines, who works as an acute care nurse at Towson, Md.-based Greater Baltimore Medical Center and has been a nurse for 10 years, noticed when attempting a rescue breath that the man's chest was not rising. She said his airway was blocked. They used an oropharyngeal airway found onboard to open his airways.
After about 15 minutes, they were able to get his heartbeat back and the man was conscious by the time they made an emergency landing in Raleigh, N.C. The man was immediately taken to a nearby hospital by emergency personnel.
"Not a lot of times when you give CPR or have situations like this do patients truly make it," Ms. Raines said. "It doesn't happen often."
A week later, the couple received a thank-you message and update from the man's wife.
"We are still not completely sure what happened," the wife wrote in a text message. She said that "he didn't have a heart attack" and that it was probably "due to low oxygen levels."
"We are so proud of Emily and her quick response during this emergency, and we are glad to hear the gentleman is now doing well," Angie Feurer, MSN, chief nursing officer at GBMC HealthCare, told the Post.