In all the discussion so far, everyone has failed to mention one crucial ingredient.
DUTY TO ACT. In order to be sued for negligence (not speaking about a civil suit), there must have been a duty for the negligent person to have acted and provided care. Being that this was not a medical facility, or a full-fledged assisted living facility (according to the news reports), the person who identified themselves as a nurse had absolutely no duty to treat the woman on the floor.
If a person is in a hospital, or an ambulance responds to an emergency and they refuse to treat anyone, then they have been negligent. But this ‘nurse’ had no duty to act, therefore she could not be found guilty of gross negligence in not providing care.
As far as the ethical and moral aspect here, I would like to think that many of us would have acted differently, however I would like to shed some light into why this nurse refused to help.
Much of today’s medicine is practiced and provided with only one goal in mind – don’t sue me. There are millions of dollars wasted on unnecessary tests, examinations, and screenings for the simple purpose of not worrying about getting sued. A disproportionate amount of health care providers’ time is spent on DOCUMENTATION – to cover themselves in case of a suit.
Providing CPR against company policy, were something to go wrong and the CPR caused an injury or was unsuccessful or something, it would have easily resulted in a suit against the facility and the nurse for providing unauthorized care to the patient. It would be somewhat similar to providing care in a DNR situation. In that, care was provided counter to the patient’s instructions.
And finally, it is a bit extreme to call this person a murderer, if you realize that the statistics of a CPR recipient walking out of the hospital are extremely low especially for geriatric patients.