Good Samaritan Law - Providing Medical Healthcare in Emergencies

Some healthcare providers might want to provide medical intervention during emergencies, but are afraid of doing so for liability reasons such as committing a medical error due to the emergency circumstances, such as when a person is unconscious and unable to provide dialog that led to their medical condition. Unless you're a trained emergency medical professional, it's possible that things could go wrong during an emergency, even if you had the proper training!

As such, it’s important to know that there is something called Good Samaritan Law, which can be different from state-to-state, and even internationally. On a recent airline flight, a flight attendant in international airspace loudly proclaimed the good samaritan law when no one volunteered to provide urgent medical care to an individual in need. The flight attendant proclaimed a caregiver cannot be held accountable for providing emergency medical assistance to that individual if any harm is done during a reasonable effort to provide care.

This Good Samaritan Law is important to know because in September 2025, Javier's restaurant in the Aria Resort & Casino and MGM Resort International was sued for wrongful death when no life saving medical care measures were attempted which they claim resulted in well-known actor Mike Heslin’s death. The wrongful death lawsuit claims:
Staff "stood by, took no immediate lifesaving action, and failed to initiate or support efforts that could have saved Michael’s life."

• Failed to perform CPR and did not retrieve an automated external defibrillator (AED).
• Failed to keep a stock and inventory of emergency response equipment, including, but not limited to, an automated external defibrillator (AED), or failed to train their staff on where the AEDs were stored.
• It was also stated that a woman allegedly attempted to perform CPR on Heslin at one point. However, the complaint alleged that an employee “forcefully interfered” and removed her from the scene.

If an attorney can sue waiters and a restaurant for failure to provide emergency medical assistance, can you imagine what they would do if a healthcare worker did not provide the same?

While it’s important to always work within your own licensed scope of practice, emergency life threatening situations when other more qualified healthcare providers are not available can become exceptions to what can be practiced. All healthcare providers should know basic emergency life saving measures. These include:

• Learn the heimlich maneuver for choking patients.
• Learn or update CPR certifications and install or locate the nearest AED device to your workplace, especially if you work on cardiovascularly compromised patients, which includes more vulnerable populations such amongst retirement villages or hospice care.
• It would also be important to learn of any medical equipment requirements that are required by law at your healthcare practice, and to ensure you are properly trained to use anything within your scope of practice that could provide life saving measures to anyone in need.

Florida's Good Samaritan Law provides immunity from civil liability for individuals who provide emergency assistance in good faith, protecting them from lawsuits if their actions are not grossly negligent or malicious, even if the aid doesn't succeed or causes minor harm. The law's purpose is to encourage people to help in emergencies without fear of legal repercussions for good-faith efforts or resulting medical errors.

A good samaritan law would generally apply to private citizens, although it could also extend to medical professionals acting in an emergency outside of their usual healthcare setting or scope of practice. 

Exceptions to the good samaritan law are, it should not to be regularly used to operate a medical facility without sufficient medical staff. For example, if patients are regularly coding in the medical facility, then there should be a doctor on staff and other trained medical professionals to run the codes. Consistently operating outside of one’s licensed scope under the good samaritan law is a manipulative abuse of practice and likely punishable by law when proper licensed healthcare is not being provided by medical staff.

Good samaritan laws usually do not protect individuals from liability if their actions involve gross negligence, manipulative conduct, complete recklessness, or malicious intent. 
An example of this would be cutting a person’s abdomen open on an airplane, without proper training, sanitation or reason to do so. There must be some good faith in your emergency medical care for the good samaritan law to apply.

To learn more about healthcare laws and medical errors prevention, please register for one of our courses at:  https://ceinstitute.com/collections/mandatory