By You never know when your chance to be a hero will arise. For Emily Raines and Daniel Shifflett it was while they were flying from Ft. Lauderdale to Baltimore following a trip to The Bahamas when near-disaster struck, and they found themselves facing a life or death situation.
The pair were on Southwest Flight 553 when a flight attendant made a desperate plea for medical assistance; a fellow passenger was experiencing an emergency.
Raines and her boyfriend immediately jumped into action and surrounding passengers rushed to help by providing medical equipment. The ailing man had fallen unconscious with no pulse, CBS News reported.
“On our way up there I was trying to pregame, like, ‘Hey, if we have to do compressions, I need you to do compressions. I’ll take care of everything else,'” Raines recalled.
The situation grew dire as the man slumped over in his seat, his face completely purple. “It was quite alarming, obviously, seeing his face look that way,” Raines said.
After performing multiple rounds of compressions, Raines was able to revive the man roughly seven minutes before the plane landed. “I would say about seven minutes before we landed is when we got him back to life,” she said.
Reports explained that the passenger did not experience a heart attack, but for some strange reason, his heart stopped beating while he was in the air.
Emily works as an acute care nurse at Greater Baltimore Medical Center and she credited the training she received from the hospital for helping her to stay calm and take action.
She said that “her ability to respond effectively to training through GBMC’s Resuscitation Quality Improvement (RQI) program. The program delivers quarterly training to support mastery of high-quality CPR skills.
In 2021, GBMC was the first hospital in Maryland to receive the title of a Resuscitation Quality Improvement Lighthouse Organization, recognizing consistent use and adoption of this innovative CPR training program.”
Thanks to Emily and Daniel’s quick thinking, the passenger is doing well and is now recovering at home.
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