Narrative:

While dealing with a medical situation two things happened on this flight that were of great safety concern! 1) although the wrong oxygen bottle was accidentally grabbed the much bigger issue was that the metal mask insertion [fitting] was malfunctioning! Whether it was the mask tubing fitting or on the bottle side it would not attach! I tried; the male emt tried; and then; once we landed; the mechanic even tried and had difficulty with connecting the mask to the bottle; the mechanic initially suspected it might be the wrong mask for the bottle. Later the mechanic told me it was the correct numbered part for that bottle; however; it definitely was not working properly. Had we had a decompression issue or some other issue where we needed more oxygen; especially for the flight attendants; we would have been compromised! 2) once on the ground and taxied to our gate we had to 'hold' for several minutes while they pushed another aircraft out of our way! I could not believe this! Had this been a bigger medical [issue] than it was--or had we been performing cpr--we could have easily lost this passenger! I later learned that the ATC controller failed to notify our ground crew that we had a medical situation on board. That mistake could have cost our passenger his life!!I do not know what caused the break down of communication on the ground as I was attending to the passenger on my aircraft and I do not have access to the communications from ATC or ground.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: When faced with supplying oxygen to an unresponsive passenger the Lead Flight Attendant aboard a Q400 was unable to insert the mask into the preferred high flow port on a flight attendant walkaround bottle. Another portable bottle; intended specifically for medical emergencies with immediate access to high flow was obtained to successfully resuscitate the passenger who was mobile upon arrival.

Narrative: While dealing with a medical situation two things happened on this flight that were of great safety concern! 1) Although the wrong oxygen bottle was accidentally grabbed the much bigger issue was that the metal mask insertion [fitting] was malfunctioning! Whether it was the mask tubing fitting or on the bottle side it would not attach! I tried; the male EMT tried; and then; once we landed; the Mechanic even tried and had difficulty with connecting the mask to the bottle; the Mechanic initially suspected it might be the wrong mask for the bottle. Later the Mechanic told me it was the correct numbered part for that bottle; however; it definitely was not working properly. Had we had a decompression issue or some other issue where we needed more oxygen; especially for the flight attendants; we would have been compromised! 2) Once on the ground and taxied to our gate we had to 'HOLD' for several minutes while they pushed another aircraft out of our way! I could not believe this! Had this been a bigger medical [issue] than it was--or had we been performing CPR--we could have easily lost this passenger! I later learned that the ATC Controller failed to notify our ground crew that we had a medical situation on board. That mistake could have cost our passenger his life!!I do not know what caused the break down of communication on the ground as I was attending to the passenger on my aircraft and I do not have access to the communications from ATC or ground.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site as of July 2013 and automatically converted to unabbreviated mixed upper/lowercase text. This report is for informational purposes with no guarantee of accuracy. See NASA's ASRS site for official report.