AU Public Safety and some university students disagree about whether officers responded appropriately to a medical emergency in Mary Graydon Center Wednesday evening.
A male student fell and began having a seizure in MGC's lobby around 5:05 p.m. Public Safety officers arrived roughly five to six minutes after the initial call, according to University Center Assistant Director of Operations Patrick Ledesma who witnessed the incident.
Rakiba Kibria, a junior in the School of International Service and College of Arts and Sciences, said she called Public Safety from the MGC information desk shortly after the student fell. She estimated it took Public Safety between 10 and 15 minutes to respond to her call.
"By the time they came he was coughing up blood," she said.
Kibria said she did not think the officers who responded were qualified to handle a seizure. When the officers arrived, they spoke to the student and examined him externally with a flashlight, she said.
Anthony Brenneman, a graduate student in the School of Communication who witnessed the incident, said he expected officers to respond more quickly. He said he assumed the new T3 scooters would improve officers' response times.
"It didn't make me feel any safer on campus thinking that Public Safety would be so slow to react to an emergency," Brenneman said.
During emergencies it is common for anxious bystanders to overestimate the amount of time they have spent waiting for help to arrive, said Public Safety Chief Michael McNair. Public Safety received the call at 5:07 p.m. and the first officer was on the scene at 5:09 p.m., McNair said in an initial e-mail. He then corrected himself in a follow-up e-mail, saying that upon reviewing the dispatch recordings, he ascertained that the response time was four minutes instead of two minutes. The difference between the two estimated times is the time it took dispatch to obtain information from the caller and to answer five additional calls made from the scene of the incident, McNair said.
"I still contend that the response time of the officers and the dispatcher was adequate for this case," he said in his follow-up e-mail.
Public Safety's average response time to on-campus incidents is between two and four minutes, McNair said.
When officers arrived at MGC, they cleared the crowd from the area, turned the student on his side to facilitate breathing and escorted the D.C. Fire Department onto campus.
The only form of First Aid training Public Safety officers receive is CPR certification from a Public Safety instructor. They are also trained to stabilize the victim during medical emergencies and lead the ambulance to the site.
While other D.C. schools like Georgetown University and George Washington University have on-campus hospitals, AU has seen no need to incur the expense of providing an on-site Emergency Medical Services unit. The DCFD responds to most ambulance calls within 10 minutes, McNair said.
Due to privacy reasons, Public Safety has not disclosed the name of the student involved in Wednesday's incident. The student was transported to Sibley Hospital following the incident, and AU has received no further information regarding his condition. While this most likely means the students it okay, the hospital will not release any information on his condition, McNair said.
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