By A.P. Crawford (ap.crawford@skipatrol.ca)
On January 21, 2023, a group of patrollers at Mont Orford in Eastern Townships Zone worked together to save the life of one of their own. That group consisted of Martin Henri, Daniel Dupuis, France Duval, Alain Boulet, Alexy Bélanger, Sébastien Metzger, Jean-Claude Boutin, Simon Guillemette, Isabelle Gagnon, Jean Côté, Stéphanie Brisebois, Marie-Claude Brodeur, Jean-Robert Leblanc, Sébastien Millette, Anie Craig, Patrick Poulin, Sophie Gagnon, Floralie Côté Boisvert, Philippe Jacob and Olivier Lessard.
Benoît Robert had just completed a toboggan transportation with a fellow patroller and was headed over to a race on a different run when he collapsed just before reaching the chairlift. A customer used Benoît’s radio to report the incident, while others started to perform CPR with no success due to his backpack being under him. Patrollers quickly began to converge on the scene, with Martin Henri assuming the lead. He realized that Benoît needed to be transported quickly. France Duval called EMS and then, working with Alain Boulet, applied an AED while Daniel Dupuis did ventilations. Two shocks were administered before the toboggan arrived. Benoît was loaded and transported to the patrol room, where resuscitation efforts continued with members of the team rotating in and out of giving hands-on CPR and other necessary interventions. At Mont Orford there are resident doctors on site who work in the patrol room. One inserted an oropharyngeal airway to improve the quality of the ventilations. When EMS arrived, a supervisor determined that the situation was under control. Once Benoît’s pulse had been restored he was transported to hospital for further treatment.
For all of the patrol who assisted, the situation had many challenges including the crowd at the incident site, the time it took for EMS to arrive at the patrol room (more than 30 minutes), the number of shocks needed to be delivered from the AED (12 since with each shock Benoît seemed to regain consciousness for a few seconds before becoming unconscious again and on a few occasions he even squeezed the hand of a patroller by his side), and the patients in other beds in the patrol room at the time. Probably the most challenging part of the incident was that the team was working to save the life of a colleague, and to address the needs of his family. After the event, the entire team participated in critical incident stress management (CISM) debriefing.
Benoît emailed his patrol on January 26 to tell them what happened from his perspective. It was determined at the hospital that he suffered from left atrial fibrillation and that blood clots had formed. One had gone into a coronary artery, which blocked it and stopped the heart beating. This is the rarest path for a clot to take. Until that time he had no knowledge of his condition; his watch is now configured to detect such an event. The hospital determined that the CPR had allowed some blood to pass by the clot (about 20 per cent) which he believes was why he was passing in and out of consciousness. He reported that he had some fleeting memories of the incident, but did not regain consciousness until he was in the coronary intensive care unit at the Fleurimont Hospital in Sherbrooke, Quebec.
Benoît is alive today thanks to the work of the entire Mont Orford team of patrollers and physicians and other EMS personnel. In fact it was Benoît who submitted the nomination for this group to be recognized with the John D. Harper Lifesaving Award which happened in September 2023.
This post is also available in: French