May 16, 2001

Employees save customer's life

       Two Meijer employees saved an elderly man’s life Monday afternoon after he collapsed in the Greenwood store.  Re F. Poehler, 72, was shopping with his wife in the women’s clothing section just before 4:30 p.m. when he apparently suffered a heart attack.  As luck would have it, Meijer stores throughout the Midwest had joined a nationwide program in which some store employees were trained to use a lifesaving device for just that situation.  Monday, store detectives Christina Edwards and Doug Mullins became the first employees at the Greenwood store to put the program to the test.  I didn’t think of anything,” Edwards said of her reaction when she heard the loudspeaker announce a medical emergency. “I just had the steps of CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation) going through my head. Afterwards, it came to reality. I just thought, ‘I hope this man lives.’” As Edwards ran to Poehler’s side, Mullins raced to get one of the store’s two cardiac defibrillators — a device that uses an electric current to get the heart beating into a regular rhythm.  By the time paramedics and emergency medical technicians arrived three minutes later from the White River Township Fire Department station down the street, the pair had revived Poehler using the small machine. Poehler was listed Tuesday in critical care in the intensive care unit at Community Hospital South, according to a hospital spokeswoman.  “You think you’ll never have to use it,” said Mullins, 24, who has been employed at the store for five years, “I know that without the defibrillator he wouldn’t have had a pulse at all and would have had less of a chance to make it.”  The store acquired the defibrillator through a national research program conducted by National Institutes of Health and sponsored by the American Heart Association.  Deb Cordes, MSN, RN, at Krannert Cardiology in Indianapolis is the coordinator of the study.  Cordes said the program is studying how to increase the survival rate of heart attack patients by making defibrillators — referred to as Automatic External Defibrillators or AEDs — more widely accessible.  “We know the AEDs work,” she said. “What we don’t know is can we train lay people to use them, and can we do it in a cost-effective manner?” Nationwide, 24 cities are in the study. In each city, 40 businesses participate — 20 of them trained for CPR and 20 of them trained to use an AED.  The training, textbooks and use of the devices are free, Cordes said.  The Greenwood Meijer store received two AEDs in January. Six store employees were given the training.  This was the first cardiac arrest at the store since the program began.  Joel Thacker, battalion chief for White River Township Fire Department, said putting defibrillators in the hands of employees of local businesses, particularly ones like Meijer that have a high volume of visitors in and out, could have a large impact.  “This is the way the whole system is supposed to work, and it worked perfectly,” Thacker said. “It’s a great program they have started there, and hopefully it will be a model for others.”  Beyond the program, Thacker encouraged everyone in the community to get CPR training. “We can get there within four or five minutes,” he said. “But if someone’s there immediately, that is the optimum situation."  (Reprinted with permission from the Daily Journal)

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