Nurse who saved bus driver's life in Dublin grateful 'to have been able to be there for him'

She said the bus rolled over a bike, and while the cyclist fell away suffering only minor injuries, the passengers at the time thought the rider too had gone under the vehicle.

“There were cars brakingbesid, there were people jogging e the bus looking in at us. We were just like ‘What do we do? We need to stop this bus’,” she said.

Ms McGivney said she went to the front of the bus and was able to reach into the driver’s cabin to take his foot off the accelerator.

“I was just shaking him, trying to move his legs to make sure they weren't on the pedals and eventually the bus just cut out when he wasn't touching any pedals, it was still rolling a little bit but slowed down and then just came to stop," she said.

“Then there were passengers on the inside trying to get out, and people on the outside trying to help us get out."

She said they didn't know how to open the door.

"I just said we need to get this man out onto flat ground,” she told Ryan Tubridy on RTÉ Radio 1.

I got my coat under his head, and we had him in the recovery position to monitor his breathing and his heart rate and then noticed that he had stopped both.

We just started CPR compressions and I called for people to ring an ambulance and to get the AED [Automated External Defibrillator] machine.

“The ambulance was amazing. They got there so quick that by the time someone had run off to get the AED machine, the ambulance was there because we didn't know where the nearest one was.

“I went to get my coat back afterwards and the guards said we kept him alive until the ambulance got there.

"We got him back and he was up talking, conscious, by the time he was gone to the hospital,” she said.

Ms McGivney said she was speaking out about the incident to raise awareness of the benefits of CPR training.

Ryan's chatting to heroic nurse Aoife McGivney who saved the life of a bus driver who suffered a heart attack while driving through rush-hour traffic in Dublin yesterday @RTERadio1 #DublinBus #CPR pic.twitter.com/3tnWvx9R98

— Oliver Callan (@OliverCallanRTE) March 5, 2019

“It was a very, very scary situation to be in. Even if someone did have first aid training, it's so hard to be in that situation, to be aware and know when to recognize to start going into CPR, and that's the main reason I want to talk about all this, because I do want to promote it and how important it is to get your training and to actively recognize when someone is that sick and when it's time to intervene.

“People were amazing, stepping forward with their own training and it was great for me to be able to take a break from doing CPR and pass it on to someone else,” she said.

“I'm so grateful to be able to have been able to be there for him and do that for him,” she said.