Commonwealth Court Finds Firefighter’s PTSD Resulted from Abnormal Working Conditions After Two Infant CPR Incidents Within a Brief Period of Time

This case involved a claimant who, as a firefighter, experienced two events in which he performed cardiac pulmonary resuscitation (CPR) on infants within a period of roughly two-and-one half years, both of whom were not resuscitated. 

The first event occurred in November 2018. The infant was two weeks old. Despite the claimant’s efforts, he was unable to bring the baby back. The claimant suffered mental issues related to the incident but continued working for the employer. 

The second event occurred in May 2021, when a father brought a nine-month-old infant who was not breathing to the fire station. The claimant attempted CPR, but the baby was not revived. 

Thereafter, the claimant’s mental health symptoms intensified, and he stopped working as a firefighter. He filed a Claim Petition, alleging that he sustained a work-related, disabling post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as a result of his duties as a firefighter.

The parties did not dispute that the claimant suffered PTSD. The issue concerned whether the events amounted to abnormal working conditions. 

The workers’ compensation judge dismissed the Claim Petition based on testimony given by the claimant’s fire chief, who testified that CPR training involves CPR on infants and adults and that administering CPR was a normal part of the claimant’s job, not an abnormal working condition. 

The judge found that the situations, while traumatic, were not extraordinary or abnormal for first responders. The claimant appealed to the Workers’ Compensation Appeal Board, which affirmed.

On appeal to the Commonwealth Court, the claimant argued that he established, as a matter of law, that he was exposed to abnormal working conditions in his work as a firefighter and, therefore, is entitled to the payment of workers’ compensation benefits. The Commonwealth Court agreed and reversed the decisions below. In doing so, the court found that the incidents that caused the claimant’s PTSD were each a singular, extraordinary event for this claimant and, thus, constituted an abnormal working condition. 

According to the court, as a firefighter, the claimant did not simply witness death at a usual call. Instead, he was actively involved in attempting to resuscitate two separate unresponsive babies and witnessed each of their deaths. The court noted that their review of the record showed that such events rarely occur and that the potential for substantial psychological damage to the claimant was high, as evidenced by the employer calling on the county’s Critical Incident Stress Decreasement team for the claimant twice in four years. 

The court noted that that, although there were two distinct incidents involved, the culmination of the two within a brief period of time created a sequence, and the sequence became the extraordinary event. The court held that the claimant’s development of disabling PTSD after the sequence was not merely a subjective reaction to normal working conditions.  

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