Stop the Bleeding
Recently I attended a Stop the Bleeding training class that was given by the Long Island Federation of Labor. It was an interesting class, and I would like to go over the basic techniques to stop the bleeding. The technique’s that were explained can be used in daily life crisis. Here are the A, B, C’s to stop the bleeding.
The first thing that you should do is (A) alert first responders. If you are taking care of the victim, make sure that you tell someone to call 911, make sure that person acknowledges you that they will call 911. Do not take it for granted that someone will call 911. What sometimes happens in an emergency situation is that everyone thinks that someone else called 911, and in some cases, no one called 911. If you know the name of a person at the scene, call his name and point towards him example: John call 911 and make sure that John acknowledges you and understands what you want him to do.
Next, (B) we must locate the bleeding, see where the injury is on the victim is it on a limb or is it in the body cavity of the victim. You might have to take some of the victim’s cloths off to locate the bleeding. Look to see if it is a pool of blood, is the blood flowing out of the victim, or internal bleeding. If there is an object protruding from the victim’s wound, do not remove the object that will cause more bleeding to the victim when you take the object out.
After the first responders were notified and you located where the bleeding is coming from on the victim, the next thing to do is try and address the wound (C), with compression. There are two types of compression: one is a tourniquet and the other is actual compression on the wound. If the injury on the victim is located on a limb the best way to stop the bleeding would be by applying a tourniquet on the injury. You would place the tourniquet 2 to 3 inches above the wound and twist the tourniquet until the bleeding stops. Of course, not everyone carriers a tourniquet in their back pocket so you would have to make do, you can use a belt, tie, shoelace(s) (depending on the size and location of the wound), rope or whatever else you can use to make a tourniquet to put around the wound. Remember, you must twist the end of the tourniquet, so you should try and use a strong object like a ruler, a pen, screwdriver, spoon, fork or anything else you think that would work to use to twist the tourniquet around the wound to stop the bleeding. If the bleeding is coming from the body cavity, we must apply compression to stop the bleeding. We should use gauze, towel, rag, cloth or clothing. Do not use paper towels, tissues, napkins, toilet paper or any other paper product as these paper products will not stop the bleeding, the blood would absorb the paper. If the bleeding is coming from a hole in the victim, we must clog it up. You should use the material I mentioned above to do this, but you must do this one piece at a time, the same way you take a tissue out of a tissue box, one piece at a time is the way you address the wound. When you have the hole completely packed with the material, I mentioned you must keep compression on the wound as to not let the bleeding start again. Do not stop compression to look at the wound as this will start the bleeding again.
Whichever technique you use to stop the bleeding do it until first responders arrive and they will instruct you on what to do next.
