TRAUMA UPDATE
News from the Trauma Center at Bryan Medical Center FALL 2017
Lifesaving Stop the Bleed training empowers public to be first responders By Heather Talbott, MSN, RN
M
ost people remember where they were in 2012 when they heard about the tragedy of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. A day when six adults and 20 children lost their lives to an active shooter. On that day Dr. Lenworth Jacobs, a trauma surgeon in Hartford, Connecticut, and his team waited in their trauma bay for the injured to arrive, but they never did. Dr. Jacobs speaks of this experience often, talking about the impact not only on the community of Sandy Hook and his medical team but also on a nation wondering what we could’ve done differently to save some of those lives. Dr. Jacobs took it upon himself to review each of the autopsies, and what he found is that they each died from bleeding to death. Dr. Jacobs was angered and wanted to find a solution as unfortunately these types of events seem to be happening more often. Less than 5 months later, this physician organized the first meeting of the Hartford Consensus. The Hartford Consensus is a committee in which Dr. Jacobs chaired on behalf of the American College of Surgeons. This committee was the first of its kind in which it had all the key players at the table to address and hopefully increase survival from active shooter and intentional mass casualty events. Historically when these events occur, EMS/first responders are not allowed to go in and care for the wounded until the scene has been deemed “safe.” If you think of events that have occurred near our own communities, like the Omaha Von Maur shooting in 2007 and the Americold shooting in Crete in 2010, it shows that these events can happen anywhere to anyone. In each of these tragedies there were uninjured bystanders near the wounded. Dr. Jacobs acknowledged that at Sandy Hook there were teachers, assistants and others who were not harmed and that with the proper training and tools maybe some of those kids would have survived. The mantra that emerged from the Hartford Consensus and was echoed by the Obama administration as well as the Department
of Homeland Security is that nobody should die from uncontrolled bleeding. Stop the Bleed is a National Campaign with the goal of training 300 million Americans in basic bleeding control. The campaign was initiated by a federal interagency work group convened by the National Security Council Staff, The White House. The campaign’s goal is to build national resilience by better preparing the public to save lives by raising awareness of basic actions to stop life-threatening bleeding following everyday emergencies and man-made and natural disasters. Hopefully, readers of this Trauma Update will never be involved in an active shooter event. However, the likelihood of driving across town and coming across a motorcycle crash with the victim profusely bleeding is very possible. This campaign/education empowers those who are not medical professionals to put their hands on that victim and to try to help until EMS gets there. It takes as little as 3 minutes for an individual to bleed to death. In the city of Lincoln we are fortunate that EMS responds in 4 to 7 minutes on average. For those in rural areas it may take EMS 45 minutes or longer to get to a patient. For some patients that may be too late. The Stop the Bleed campaign empowers anyone at the scene to act as an immediate responder and save lives if they know simple tactics on what to do. This campaign supports President Barack Obama’s policy directive for national preparedness (Presidential Policy Directive 8), which targets preparedness as a shared responsibility of the government, the private and nonprofit sectors, and individual citizens. The Stop the Bleed initiative/training is being called the CPR of the 21st Century. Some high schools already are making this a mandatory training to graduate just like Basic Life Support (CPR). The actual course averages to be 1.5 hours long. There is a didactic portion of lecture with a PowerPoint presentation and then hands on where the participants get to practice placing tourniquets, holding pressure on wounds, identifying life threatening bleeding, etc. n To learn more about Stop the Bleed or to set up a training, please email stopthebleed@bryanhealth.org.