Nurse saves heart attack bus driver
Hero in CPR rush-hour drama
A HEROIC nurse saved the life of a bus driver who suffered a heart attack while driving through rushhour traffic yesterday.
Aoife Mcgivney, who works in Dublin’s Mater Hospital, sprung into action after the casualty fell ill as he passed over O’connell Bridge at 8am.
She also helped to avert further disaster when she managed to stop the vehicle after it rolled through red lights at the busy junction.
Aoife had been travelling with her earphones in and was alerted that something was wrong when the bus started rolling and she heard screaming. Speaking on The Hard Shoulder on Newstalk, she said people started to panic when they thought they had hit a cyclist.
Aoife added: “I ran up to the bus driver and recognised he was unconscious, turned around and said we need to stop the bus. The bus was still rolling.
“We didn’t know if it was going to go on to the path or we didn’t know if it had already hit someone and thank God the cyclist was OK and was fine.
“We didn’t know what was going on and what kind of danger we were all in, especially this bus driver who was obviously not well.”
The brave young woman was able to open the driver’s cabin and move his leg off the accelerator and stop the bus.
Aoife said: “He [the driver] was breathing at the time, I was checking his pulse, but I could tell he wasn’t conscious and he was pre-arrest so we were looking for signs that he was at risk of having a full cardiac arrest.”
Aoife got two fellow passengers to help her lift the stricken driver out of the bus and on to the pavement.
The driver then went into full cardiac arrest and Aoife performed CPR on him until emergency services arrived.
A guard who assisted the medic later told her the driver was alive and talking when he was taken away in an ambulance.
Aoife said: “It’s so important to have CPR training and first-aid training. It’s so important for people to be aware of it because there were great people around who were able to join in and shout, “I have first-aid training’.”