'Stop the Bleed' training offered to public to help save lives during emergencies
SEATTLE -- Mass casualty events like mass shootings, natural disasters, and terrorist attacks can happen at anytime and anywhere.
Critical training through the nationwide Stop the Bleed campaign is now being offered to the public locally in an effort to help save lives during emergency situations.
The hands-on skills Julie Wessel and her daughter Olive learned at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle on Saturday morning were skills they hope they never have to use in real life. They were shown how to pack deep wounds with rolls of gauze and apply tourniquets on fake limbs.
In this day and age of mass shootings and natural disasters, they are skills Olive Wessel feels all of us should know, she said.
"If more citizens and regular people come and do these kinds of things, fewer people are likely to get hurt or possibly die in these emergency situations," she said. "Anything that you can to learn how to respond in an emergency situation, just go do it. Anything can help save someone’s life."
The training, which is now being offered to the public for free through Harborview Medical Center, is part of the national Stop the Bleed” campaign that was initially sparked in response to the Sandy Hook shooting back in 2012, said Dr. Eileen Bulger, Chief of Trauma at Harborview Medical Center/UW Medicine.
The campaign is now being introduced in the Seattle area. Local trauma surgeons are now teaching the public how to recognize life-threatening bleeding and how to deal with it, Bulger said.
The goal is to partner with people in the community who want to bring the training to their workplace, school, or other high-profile areas.
"I work in an office building where something like this could happen and I thought ‘It’s just good information to have on top of CPR.’" said Julie Wessel.
Timing in an emergency situation is critical.
According to the Stop the Bleed Washington campaign, blood loss is the leading cause of preventable death in multiple casualty events like mass shootings, terrorist attacks and earthquakes. Significant external bleeding can also result from everyday events such as a motorcycle crash, or industrial accident. First responders will arrive as quickly as possible, but bystanders are often on scenes first.
"Unfortunately, these events are not rare in our society anymore and they can happen anywhere and you can’t plan for them," said Bulger. "So, any place where lots of people gather a shopping mall, a stadium, can be a place where something bad can happen. And if you don’t have the equipment available and people around who know how to stop the bleeding, then we’re going to lose more lives."
The equipment includes bleeding control packs, which provide critical supplies to help control someone’s bleeding in an emergency situation. The kits, which have been installed near Automated External Defibrillators (AEDs) around Harborview's campus, include a tourniquet, trauma dressing, gauze, gloves, trauma sheers, a permanent marker, and a time instruction card.
Professional kits can cost several hundred dollars, but they are something you can put together on your own, doctors said.
Wessel and her daughter said it's important to be as prepared as you can just in case the unthinkable ever happens.
"I would hope that I would be calm enough. I would hope that if I was injured, somebody would be calm enough to do it," Julie Wessel said.
Training sessions are offered to the public for free each month throughout the year. Click here to sign up and to learn more about the Stop the Bleed campaign.
