Bloomfield College professor helps save a life in the sky

BLOOMFIELD, NJ — At Bloomfield College, students and colleagues of professor of nursing Lori Ann Palmieri do not have to look far to find a hero. Palmieri, a longtime Bloomfield College professor who began her student teaching there in 2007, recently helped save a life while on a flight to Arizona.

According to Palmieri, a 28-year-old woman had started having seizure-like activity and went into cardiac arrest. Palmieri rushed over and helped transfer the woman from her seat to the aisle floor, checking her carotid pulse while a cardiologist who was on board checked her femoral pulse. As the young woman turned blue, the team of health care professionals began CPR.

“We continued CPR for about 90 seconds, still without a pulse. As we alternated on chest compressions, the cardiologist and I set up the automated external defibrillator that had been brought over to us. As I was doing chest compressions, she suddenly started to move and opened her eyes, so a shock was not advised by the AED,” Palmieri said. “It was a miracle because less than 5 percent of CPR done outside of a hospital ends in the survival of the individual. She was very lucky that she had two health care professionals on the plane who were able to trade off between operating the AED and giving CPR.”

Palmieri reported that the pilot of the American Airlines plane made an emergency landing in Oklahoma City, Okla., where EMTs were ready to greet the woman, whose subsequent diagnosis was spontaneous cardiac arrest of unknown origin. A couple of weeks later the cardiologist and the young woman, named Brittany, appeared on “The Today Show” to share the story and advocated that everyone should learn CPR.

“I was disappointed about not having been a part of sharing the story on a national scale, but I see it as a lesson that we need to advocate for our nursing profession,” Palmieri said. “As nurses, we are sometimes seen as ancillary, conducting our work in the background, and we often don’t get the credit we might deserve. I guess this was one of those cases, but I am so grateful to have been at the right place at the right time to help save a life.”

For her heroism in the sky, American Airlines gave Palmieri 25,000 miles and a letter of appreciation.

Palmieri, who is pursuing a Ph.D. in nursing research and recently defended her dissertation proposal, teaches in the undergraduate BSN program and the RN to BSN program in the college’s Frances M. McLaughlin Division of Nursing.

  Bloomfield College