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The Osaka Fire Department says that an ambulance crew dispatched after an emergency phone call mistakingly pronounced a man in his 70s dead at his home. Furthermore, the ambulance personnel failed to transport the man to a hospital.
An acquaintance of the man was visiting him at his residence in Oriono, Sumiyoshi Ward, at around 12:25 p.m. on June 2. When he found his friend collapsed, he placed an emergency call, Sankei Shimbun reported. Ambulance personnel arrived within three minutes and determined that the man was not breathing and reported that they could feel no pulse.
According to the fire department, the ambulance personnel informed Sumiyoshi police station about the situation, said the man was deceased and left the scene. However, when police officers arrived, at 1:20 p.m., they found the man still breathing and called for another ambulance to transport him to a hospital where he was in a critical condition on Monday.
The Osaka fire department said that the ambulance crew stated the man was dead because his feet had grown cold and his knees had become stiff. However, they failed to conduct tests on his pupil dilation or level of consciousness.
A fire department spokesperson said: “We solemnly accept responsibility for this serious incident and will thoroughly instruct our crew to take every possible measure to prevent a repeat of such an incident."
© Japan Today
18 Comments
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mmwkdw
As for Ambulance crews, in Japan they often get called out by Old people to act as a kinda Tax Service. Though that said, not all are bad, the biggest problem I know of is how to precisely direct them to a specific location.
Strangerland
You don't, know that.
The likelihood of all the relevant information having been expressed in a five-paragraph article, when such incidents generally require inquiries that can take months in order to sort through the relevant information, is nearly nil. You are talking about translation 'explaining it away', implies that all the relevant information would be in the hands of the Japanese-language reporter in the first place. In the real world, this is not how things work. Journalists gather as much information as they can go meet a deadline, or to create an article they believe they can sell as a freelancer, and that's what's in the article. You cannot forget, the writers are not going to be experts on the subject about which they write either, so everything we read is filtered through their understanding of the matter in the first place.
It's absolutely ridiculous to believe you have even remotely enough information to make anything resembling an accurate judgement of the situation. Of course, your odds are about 50/50 that you're actually right, but if you are correct, it's not because you knew what you were talking about, it just happens that the actual circumstances happened to lead to the same conclusion that the five-paragraphs of on JT brought you to determine.
Fair enough. Personally, if these are top quality EMTs, I'd definitely want to be in their ambulance, especially over those of EMTs. However, I'm not ridiculous enough to believe that I've been given enough information from these five paragraphs able to determine whether these guys are experts at their game, or abject failures.
What a ridiculous strawman you just built up there. Who would ever be accepting of incompetence in a life or death situation? Your strawman does allow you to imply I should come to the same determination that these guys are incompetent, even though the information does not exist in these five paragraphs to show that one way or the other. Sorry, but I use logic, not emotion.
I also don't use Twitter.
Luddite
They are incompetents who didn't or couldn't do their job. Anyone who is trained in basic First Aid knows how to look for signs of life, it isn't rocket science, I cannot see how any translation issues would explain this away. I would hate to have to be depending on these muppets if I ever needed an ambulance. You may be accepting of incompetnce in a life or death situation, but most of us are, thankfully, more demanding than that.
shogun36
Perhaps the old man was just practicing his magic skills, and he wanted to prove that he could slow down his vital stats for show?
Strangerland
Maybe. Or maybe not.
The only accurate thing that can be said is that someone took something reported in Japanese, and wrote an English article on it. This means that there could be loss of data in between the original source and the reporter, and/or between the data in Japanese and the writing in English. We don't know what did or did not happen in that ambulance, whether the EMTs were top professionals who did everything exactly as the book, at the top level of the planet, or if they were incompetents, drunk on the job. Likely somewhere between. But all we know for sure is that someone has reported that they heard in Japanese that ambulance personnel... determined that the man was not breathing and reported that they could feel no pulse. Mistaken declarations of death do happen: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/nov/14/waking-morgue-death-janina-kolkiewicz. People in this thread are declaring it incompetence from an extremely limited amount of information that is being filtered through whatever the reporter wrote based on who they talked to, almost definitely in another language. That is clearly premature judgement.
And this is part of the major problem of not just this site, but the internet is a whole these days. Everyone feels the need to punish and destroy. Everyone must be perfect all the time, and if you are not, you cannot come back, you may as well be dead. That's exactly what people are doing in this thread.
These are all premature judgements, meant to punish, to destroy, to make them PAY.
Maybe chill out and stop being angry, and try to find out more information, rather than making yourself feel better by contributing to the destruction of a person's entire life, livelihood, and for that matter, existence.
sf2k
Sure there is. It's called "Change"
Omachi
No point in bringing a lawsuit... at 70 and with a close call already, he surely would not be around when the court case was finally held.
Luddite
Don't be ridiculous. These incompetents didn't even do the basics to check for signs of life, they only tried, and failed, to find a pulse. They couldn't even do that right. Besides, critically ill people have a much higher chance of survival if attended by paramedics rather than EMTs.
zones2surf
I am usually no fan of ambulance chasing lawyers, but it seems to me that the only way this country will ever improve its emergency medical services is for people to start suing the heck out of those responsible when these things happen.
Sorry, but it is the same only thing, time after time. "We are truly truly sorry", "moushiwake gozaimasen" and all of that. And rinse and repeat.
It is just utter bollocks.
Strangerland
Gotta love the crowd that knows EMTs jobs better than the EMTs!
Cosmos1
It's quite possible he was dead when they arrived and a slender long-legged fly jump started his heart again after they left.
Luddite
Why we don't have paramedics in Japan? These EMT muppets are useless.
Cosmos1
It's quite possible he was dead when they arrived and something jump started his heart again after they left.
kawabegawa198
Honestly, having lived here for over a decade, nothing surprises me anymore when it comes to Japanese medical "professionals".
smithinjapan
I fully support EMTs and paramedics being able to pronounce a person dead on scene, but this was obviously a big goose egg with serious consequences. The man could well have died because of their idiocy, and I hope he sues them.
Michael Jackson
If are an EMT and can't tell if someone is dead or alive you should go back to school