Ottawa pharmacy team’s swift action saves customer’s life

It seemed like just a regular day. In early June, Mohamed Ali, a pharmacist and owner of the Shoppers Drug Mart Findlay Creek location in Ottawa, was working in his office while his staff ran the pharmacy. A customer came in to use the store’s post office. Suddenly, the woman collapsed. Pharmacist on duty, Eman Ibrahim, called 911 and checked the customer’s vitals while the store manager started executing the emergency plan and got Ali. When Ali saw the woman, he immediately knew how serious the situation was. “She did not have a pulse, and her face was turning purple. She looked like a corpse to me,” he says. “She’s not pulsing, she’s not responding, she’s got saliva coming out of her mouth.” That’s when he realized that she was in cardiac arrest, and every second was going to matter. Fortunately, his store had a defibrillator. They had gotten it only about a year before through a Shoppers Drug Mart pilot project. “When I got it, I thought we would never have to use it,” he says. “This incident proved me wrong.” Read: Can't stand the Bee Gees? These alternative tracks can help optimize CPRHe said that although feeling scared would have made sense, he felt calm and focused on the next steps. He put the defibrillator on the patient and, working with Ibrahim, delivered the first shock. The first responders arrived then and took over, using the same machine and setup to deliver more shocks. After the third, the first responder said they got a pulse back. Ali felt completely different right away. “I felt like, oh my God, there is hope; she is making it.” “My Muslim holy book says, Anyone who saves a life, it will be as though he has saved the life of all mankind. At that time, that was exactly what I felt.” Afterwards, Ali spoke to his team about the importance of having the defibrillator. They decided to share their story on social media to encourage other businesses to get them as well. Ali posted it on LinkedIn, and it was seen by thousands of people and even made the news. “We started to get a lot of customers and people from the community popping by, telling us some emotional comments,” he says. “But the biggest reward was when the customer’s family told me that she had gotten out of the ICU and she was getting better.” Read: Flatlining but not dead: Why we need new CPR approaches during cardiac arrest

Ottawa pharmacy team’s swift action saves customer’s life

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