This story raises more questions than answers.
A 13-year-old boy at a camp for troubled teens died after being denied access to his emergency inhaler.
According to the CBS News story, the boy was being restrained "by counselors who said he was acting belligerently" and that the boy had asked for his inhaler in the first fifteen minutes of being "restrained", (whatever that entails).
The camp emergency medical technician saw no outward signs of the boy being in respitory distress and said "no" due to the boy's past history of asking for the inhaler whenever he was being restrained.
Some 90 minutes later, the boy went limp from oxygen deprivation and died the next day in the hospital.
What on earth happened here?
The Georgia Bureau of Investigation has launched an investigation and the people involved in this story are on administrative leave.
People go into full-blown asthma attacks all the time; anything can trigger them. It could be laughing too much, or stress, or being emotionally upset by something, or could be exercise-induced.
If they had to use physical force to restrain this kid, it stands to reason that he might have been physically resisting the counselors, and triggered an asthma attack that got worse until the airflow was restricted enough that he had a stroke or heart attack.
He would have known that he wasn't getting maximum air into his lungs and asked for help. He didn't get it.
They should NEVER have ignored someone's request for their inhaler. What were they thinking? Didn't they know anything about asthma? This was a very poor judgment call on the part of the EMT. Was he/she experienced in camp-style setting, or was this EMT a rookie to camp operations? Were there standing medical orders on what to do in certain situations, and were they followed? And what changes will be made to Georgia's troubled-youth camp procedures to make sure that something like this never happens again?
Lots of questions in a very troubling story.
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