Emergency response in a hospital elevator

Apr 1, 2006 12:00 PM, By Erin Semple

A Reading Hospital security guard in Reading, Pa. witnessed and helped to deliver a baby in an elevator early on a Tuesday morning in March.

Security guard Gary M. Wagner moved Josefa Daboin from the family van into a wheelchair and directed her and her husband David Daboin into an elevator, where the husband pushed the button for the second floor maternity ward. Before the elevator reached the floor, the baby was born.

“When we got on the elevator, there were three of us,” Wagner says. “When we got off, there were four.”

Wagner says at around 5:45 a.m. a van pulled up outside the lobby where he was on duty. “The husband was rather excited, but the mother was in a lot of pain,” he says.

Wagner radioed the hospital command center before boarding the elevator with the couple. “Seconds seemed like minutes, and she started going into labor,” he says.

Wagner had been training for the security guard position over the past four months, and he had been trained in advanced CPR, infant and adult CPR. In the elevator, he used his training to not let the baby fall. He and the father moved the baby up onto the mother's stomach. The umbilical cord was loosely wrapped around the baby's neck, so Wagner checked the baby's airway to make sure she was breathing. When they reached the maternity ward, the hospital nurses took over.

Wagner says he wanted to be prepared for this possibility. “In this job, I see a lot of pregnant ladies, so it bothered me that something like this could happen to me, especially in the most vulnerable place — the elevator,” he says.

Only a week earlier, a hospital nurse discussed with him what he should do if he was ever in this situation. “First, the baby needs to be secure. I was worried about the baby dropping out when the mom was in the van, so I used care to get her out of the van. I then realized that this was going to be the most immediate transport I had ever seen. My second concern was the umbilical cord. Third, I checked to make sure the baby was breathing.”

Wagner says the experience was remarkable. “I told the mom, her job was over already. Her husband was bouncing up and down, but I had to be professional,” he says. “I had not even seen my own babies being born. Fortunately, it was a clean birth. In security, you cannot panic in a situation. You have to be under control. I was proud to see the miracle of birth.”

The father asked Wagner to become the baby Valery's godparent. “The next day I held the baby,” he says. “We decided we would keep in touch.”

Wagner has worked as a security guard for four months at the hospital and before that as a lobby attendant. “I love this job,” he says. “I worked in a steel mill for 30 years, but for this job, you help people and meet new people.”

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