After Hours: The Emergency Medicine Mummer Who Saved a Stranger

New Year’s Day 2023 was one to remember in Philadelphia, as the city’s famous annual Mummers Parade in the morning gave way to an afternoon kickoff for Eagles football just down the road. South New Jersey native Vincent Basile was taking in both festive events on his Sunday off—first participating in the parade as a costumed Mummer with his friends, as has been their tradition through the years, then borrowing his dad’s season tickets to watch the Eagles take on the Saints later that day. But as the game approached halftime, a man collapsed in Basile’s section, no longer breathing and bleeding from the mouth. Still fully dressed in his vibrant Mummers costume and surrounded by thousands of distracted fans, the third-year emergency medicine resident at the local Einstein Medical Center snapped into action and made a memorable New Year’s Day one he could actually never forget. In an interview with Kevin Kunzmann, associate editorial director of HCPLive and an old acquaintance of Basile’s, the young doctor reflected on the events that led to his and a nurse’s resuscitation of a stranger at the game. Basile also discussed the physician’s mindset in a sudden medical emergency, as well as the correlation of his story with that of NFL player Damar Hamlin, who was resuscitated on national television during a Monday Football Game only one day later.