- Please join me in welcoming Dr John Warner.
(fanfare music)
- Good afternoon
and welcome to the American Heart Association
scientific sessions in sunny Southern California.
(clapping)
After my son was born and we were introducing
to him extended family,
I realized something very disturbing,
there were no old men on either side of my family, none.
All branches of our family tree
cut short by cardiovascular disease.
(classical music)
(door knocking)
(woman laughs)
- Hi John.
- Hey.
- How are you?
- Great nice to see you guys. - You look so good.
- I think a little better than last time right?
(laughing)
- [Janie] Dr Warner
- [John] How are you, nice to see you.
- [Janie] Look how amazing you look.
- Thanks so much. Oh I'm so glad.
- Your color, you're pink.
- Thanks
- Oh my goodness.
- You look excellent.
- [John] I'm Doctor John Warner,
I'm the president of the American Heart Association.
I'm an interventional cardiologist
and I service as the Chief Executive Officer
of UT Southwestern University Hospital, in Dallas, Texas.
I'd given my presidential address which is a big event
for the president of the American Heart Association
and the following morning I had sudden cardiac arrest
in my hotel room and was resuscitated by my family
and by some healthcare providers staying in the room
right down the hall from me.
- I heard some strange breathing sounds
and turned around just trying to figure out
what the sound was and then realized it was him on the bed.
At that point I ran to the door and screamed
Jacob and Lauren for them to come
and then ran back, grabbed the phone on the nightstand
picked it up to try and call for help.
- That's when I ran out into the hall,
Lauren that's when you came in started doing compressions
from that moment, everything was fast.
- [Lauren] That's when the adrenaline probably started.
- Yes.
- I took a second and I was like, I need to do something,
he can't just be left alone like this.
So I kind of leaned over the side of the bed
and just did some like 20 seconds or so
of some compressions on his chest.
- We ran out and I think I was about
to start banging on doors but Jacob had
the presence of mind to just start running
down the hall and screaming, doctor we need a doctor.
I think you actually said I need a cardiologist.
- I did say, we need a.
- But.
- It was overly specific but yes.
(laughing)
- But then a door opened - That's when the door opened.
- quickly and it was Tia.
- My name is Tia Raymond and I'm
a Pediatric Cardiac Intensive Care Physician.
So on that Monday morning we were awoken by the sounds
of screams in the hallway that somebody needed a physician
and so myself and Janie who is a nurse that I work with
at the hospital, woke up and went down the hall
where we found Doctor John Warner who was in
full cardiac arrest and we performed CPR
and applied a AED and shocked him out of
a pulseless rhythm with the machine twice
and we were able to resuscitate him and get a pulse back
and get him safely transported to the hospital.
- As a Pediatric Critical Care Nurse,
we often are in emergency situations
but never did you expect it when you are at a conference,
you're relaxing, maybe you're gonna sleep an extra hour
and you get woken up and so I didn't expect
to do it that morning, but it was necessary
and we just jumped in and did what we had to do
to protect John.
- What I realize and what I feel about the whole
episode is that an emergency is an incredibly opportunity,
you owe it to yourself and you owe it
to the people around you to understand, to know CPR.
You owe it to yourself to kind of think
okay, in general what would I do if there was
some kind of cardiac episode that happened?
You know, so when it does happen, you can be calm
and you can be effective and that's what enabled
the two of you to really save his life
and I'm incredibly grateful for that
and I want it to go right, I want it to go well
for other people as well.
- I am so thankful that Tia and Janie
were next door and were able to resuscitate me
and save my life and that without them
I wouldn't be having the Christmas with my family
that I'm having this week.
Seconds and minutes are everything
so the sooner you get care, the better you're gonna do.
And my story is illustrative of that,
I mean it's so important for people
to understand what to do, to know CPR,
to have the confidence and the ability to do it immediately.
If I had not been attended to this quickly
and with the knowledge that the providers had
and the hotel staff, my own family,
I wouldn't be here today.
So that commitment to take a few minutes
to learn CPR, to learn what to do in these situations
can have a huge impact on someone's life,
just like it did for mine.
- You know the American Heart Association
has been working for decades to make sure
that if someone has a cardiac arrest,
we have the education for families
and for bystanders who might not know the patient
or hospital personnel to be able to do CPR
to prolong the period of time that someone
who needs defibrillation can get it
to give us a little more time to make that happen
because that really gives people the best chance.
- It's sort of reinforced how happy I am
to do what I do, right?
I love being a cardiologist, I love being
a health care executive I mean,
all the work gets so impactful everyday,
every little thing that you do and so.
And I'm sort of just very grateful
that I've had the opportunity to be in this position,
everything worked like it should.
And like I said, as a cardiologist
you, you spend your whole life spending organizing
the people around you, to have that play out just like this.
And to know that, you know, that somehow,
you know, that my story might help it happen
for somebody else, another dad,
another husband, another friend.