SHERBURN — Ten responders from the Sherburn and Welcome area were recognized Wednesday with a Lifesave Award from the South-Central Minnesota EMS Regional System.
The award recognizes both Martin County based teams’ efforts from a call on Dec. 9, 2023, when responders from the Sherburn area were summoned to help an adult male who had collapsed.
Welcome fire and first responders arrived first, where the victim’s son, who is also a member of the Welcome team, was performing CPR on his dad.
Responders took over and started cardiac arrest protocols, which included establishing an advanced airway and using both an automated external defibrillator and a separate compression device, said a news release from the EMS Regional System.
The patient regained his pulse after about three minutes, and Sherburn Ambulance arrived shortly after and transported him to advanced care.
The victim’s son who first performed CPR is also a cardiac arrest survivor and was saved by his teammates at Sherburn Ambulance in 2013.
South Central Minnesota EMS Executive Director Mark Griffith said the out-of-hospital survival rate for cardiac arrest cases like this is one in 10 and the team members deserve to be recognized.
”When we see these things, they’re very rare, so we really need to make a big deal out of it because there’s a lot of effort that goes in beforehand that all kind of comes together to make this happen,” he said.
Griffith said responders in the region are considered for recognition after an event where a pulseless patient gets their pulse back after life-saving measures before or after they get to the hospital.
”We run it by our regional medical director … If it meets the standard of what we call … return of spontaneous circulation … if that call meets that criteria, then that will qualify as a life save.”
Griffith said part of what made this incident successful is how prepared the teams were.
”Long before this event happened, these crews are spending nights and weekends and days off training and taking calls and kind of, they train to hone their skills. They train to work together. They train to communicate together, so there’s a lot of that that goes into play,” he said.