A nurse anaesthesia graduate has saved a chef’s life by performing CPR at her own graduation dinner in Philadelphia, just hours after receiving her doctorate.
Amanda Howard was at her graduation dinner at Osteria Ama in Center City Philadelphia when a waitress came up the stairs looking for medical help, according to WPVI.
“And the waitress comes upstairs, and she’s like, ‘Is anyone here a doctor?’ We thought she was kidding,” Howard said. “Like, oh, because you all have been saying it, but the look in her face was so fearful.”
Howard went down to the kitchen and found the restaurant’s line chef on the floor. He was turning blue and had no pulse.
She and a friend, who is also a nurse, began CPR immediately.
About two minutes – one round of compressions – was enough.
“She said it took one round of CPR, about two minutes, before the chef regained a pulse,” WPVI reported.
Howard had graduated earlier the same day from Cedar Crest College in Allentown, Pennsylvania, with a doctorate in nurse anesthesia. The dinner was her celebration.
The restaurant’s owner told 6abc that “her immediate response and CPR were truly life-saving, and we believe she played a crucial role in saving his life.”
Howard described the moment as surreal.
“Yeah, it was quite the experience,” she said. “Something we do every day, but it’s very different to do it on the day that you’re celebrating yourself. So it was just very rewarding to be able to use my training in a way that could give someone more time with their family.”
After paramedics took the chef to hospital, Howard returned to her dinner. She was still partly covered in pasta sauce from performing CPR on the kitchen floor.
The restaurant comped part of her meal and gave her a gift card. The chef remains hospitalized but is stable, according to Osteria Ama.
