This past Wednesday, May 3rd, my fundamentals in biomedical sciences (II) class was visited by Kaleb Garb, a senior in the biomedical sciences program here at St. Luke's. Kaleb is a member of the Interventions of Biomedical Sciences course, a capstone program in which senior students are allowed a year to focus on any field of medicine that best piques their interest. Kaleb's focus was tactical medicine.
Kaleb began by showing us a presentation which outlined STOP THE BLEED, a national awareness campaign dedicated to encouraging bystanders to become trained to act on the scene of an emergency before medical professionals arrive. The steps/procedures of STOP THE BLEED are as follows. Before you help anyone, you must always make sure the scene is safe. After this, you should, if possible, put on gloves to prevent yourself from obtaining a blood borne disease. Next, find the source of bleeding. This may require one to remove clothing to find the source. Next, look around your environment for something to use to stop the bleeding such as a cloth, gauze, or t-shirt; then put pressure on the wound. If possible pack the wound with gauze and continue to apply pressure. Lastly one should apply a tourniquet with any item possible. This could be a true tourniquet, a belt, or even a t-shirt/pen combination. It is important that one must stay calm so as not to upset the patient! Kaleb then showed us a demonstration of this process with a dummy! He packed the wound and applied a tourniquet in two different ways-with appropriate equipment and with makeshift equipment (belt as a tourniquet).
This was a fun presentation, but I hope I never have to use these skills as a bystander!
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