SAN ANTONIO — May 19th is National Stop The Bleed Day. It is a day to bring awareness and teach people how to prevent death from traumatic bleeding. If somebody has an injury that causes severe bleeding that person can bleed to death in less than five minutes. That is why knowing this life-saving information is so important.
"The purpose of the Stop the Bleed program is to make that person who might be a bystander, turn them into an immediate responder to control a life threatening bleeding until emergency response arrives," said TaTaka Perry-Johnson who is the Trauma Program Educator at University Health. She is constantly teaching people, young, and old, how to stop the bleed through classes at University Hospital. Perry-Johnson added, "We do teach the ABCs of bleeding control during the class. And it's the same thing. We want you to have the knowledge, have the skills and the tools, but hopefully you won't have to use it."
When talking about the ABCs of bleeding, 'A' stands for Alert. Notice the bleed and call 911. Perry-Johnson said, "Make sure that emergency responders are going to be on the scene to help you out and then you're going to want to identify where that bleeding is coming from."
'B' stands for Bleeding. That's when you identify life-threatening bleeding to know what it looks like. Perry-Johnson told us, "You just want to see what life threatening bleeding look like. Is there a pooling of blood? Is there squirting of blood or their clothes soaked?"
And 'C' is compression, through the use of direct pressure, wound packing or a tourniquet. Even through use of clothing. Perry-Johnson added, "Take this gauze and we're going to pack it. In fact, they will show you see, and you want to make sure you get every angle of that injury, that wound that's in there."
University Health is holding free Stop The Bleed classes on May 19th, at 8am, 1pm, 3pm, and 4pm, at the TxDOT District Offices, 4615 NW Loop 410. They will be held in building 2, classroom 1. Tourniquets and wound packing kits will be given out to all participants.
You can check out the National Stop the Bleed website at https://www.stopthebleed.org/. There is a lot of information and local contacts for anyone outside of the Bexar County area.
The University Health Stop the Bleed page can be seen here: http://universityhealthsystem.com/StopTheBleed It includes dates for virtual training in the future.
For anyone who wants to sign up to attend the in-person Stop the Bleed training tomorrow, May 19th, on National Stop the Bleed Day, check out that website here: https://www.universityhealthsystem.com/events/stop-the-bleed-day
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