March 28, 2024

GRH and UCHC offer free Stop the Bleed class

It can take Union County Emergency Medical Services in Creston nearly 30 minutes to get to the farthest southeast corner of the county, and even with the help of Afton services, an injured person could wait up to 14 minutes for help to arrive.

“Bystanders are always there before first responders,” said Teresa Sparks, Emergency Preparedness Coordinator for Greater Regional Health.

Greater Regional Health and the Union County Healthcare Coalition is offering a free Stop the Bleed class to the public at 6 p.m. Thursday at the Union County Emergency Management office, 705 E. Taylor St. The class, which teaches tourniquet application and how to do compression dressing, is designed to prepare bystanders who arrive before EMS on how to assist accident victims.

The class is limited to 20 people and each person attending will receive a free Stop the Bleed kit containing a Combat Application Tourniquet, hemostatic gauze, a Sharpie marker, trauma shears and gloves. These are single use kits and retail for around $50.

Paramedic Jen Worisek said this kind of training for bystanders is useful to EMS as well. Someone providing assistance to an injured person can give more detailed information, painting a better picture of the situation for paramedics who can then be better prepared when they arrive.

Stop the Bleed is first aid type of training people take, but hope they never have to use.

“Honestly, I’ll tell people in the classes, when you come onto an accident, what you see on TV is not what happens in real life,” said Worisek. “It’s very rare that I’ve seen in the five years I’ve been doing this someone in a car accident that was profusely bleeding out of their leg because their bone is sticking out.”

Stop the Bleed was born out of the shooting at Sandy Hook elementary school. Victims of the shooting waited for nearly 15 minutes before they were touched by someone with training to help. The Hartford Consensus felt that was unacceptable and designed the Stop the Bleed program to give bystanders training in how to stop bleeding, thereby improving the survivability of potential casualty situations.