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Some emergency response technicians working for the organization that manages ambulance service in Mountain View and surrounding cities may have obtained CPR certification cards by paying a bribe to a CPR certification instructor.
According to Jaime Garrett, a spokeswoman for the Mountain View Fire Department, no paramedics or firefighters in the department received training from the suspect instructor.
In order to be considered proficient in CPR and other such emergency response protocol, individuals are required to take certification classes on an annual or bi-annual basis. CPR classes take many hours to complete. The suspect from Nurse Education Workshops was offering to take money in exchange for a certificate saying that a given training session had been completed.
It is unclear how many employees of Rural/Metro, which provides ambulance service to much of Santa Clara County, took courses with the instructor, and it is also unclear how many of them may have paid for their certificates rather than taking the required course. A spokesman for Rural/Metro said in a statement that the organization is taking the situation “very seriously.”
After hearing about the instructor who allegedly exchanged CPR and other certification documents for money, Rural/Metro made sure that all “impacted employees immediately completed a full, in-person CPR course provided by Rural/Metro.”
The individual who is said to have taken the bribes has yet to be identified. But, a Rural/Metro spokesman said the suspect was not an employee of Rural/Metro, but rather of Nurse Education Workshops, Inc., a non-affiliated agency which specializes in running medical training classes.
Garrett, the MVFD’s public information officer, told the Voice that while the department has sometimes contracted out its CPR training to outside agencies, it currently trains all of its firefighters and paramedics in house.
“As of right now, it has no effect on us,” Garrett said.