In Unexpected Circumstances, Faculty Members Help Save a Life

Two faculty members in the UC Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience and a former colleague were in the right place at the right time, and it led to a life-saving situation.

While attending the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry annual meeting Oct. 26-31 in San Antonio, Jeffrey Strawn, MD, Sergio Delgado, MD, and Heather Adams, DO, responded to a security guard outside a local restaurant who had been "found down” and was unresponsive.

When the three arrived, the officer was unresponsive, not breathing and without a pulse. The three began CPR and defibrillated the patient. After approximately 12 minutes of CPR and defibrillation, the officer regained a normal cardiac rhythm and was taken to a local hospital.

"We were told later that he was recovering in the hospital,” Strawn said after returning to Cincinnati. "We’re just glad we were there at the right time.”

Strawn is an associate professor and director of the Anxiety Disorders Research Program in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience and Delgado is a professor in the department and medical director of outpatient services, Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. Adams is a Triple Board (Pediatrics/Psychiatry/Child and Adolescent Psychiatry) residency program graduate of UC and Cincinnati Children’s and currently an assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Colorado School of Medicine.