11/18/2019
Wentworth-Douglass Hospital Emergency Department Offers 'Stop the Bleed' Training to Help Community Members Save Lives
Sherie Weber, BSN, RN, TCRN, CPEN, Trauma Program Manager at Wentworth-Douglass Hospital, wears a bright red T-shirt that reads “Stop the Bleed. Save a Life.” She and other Emergency Department staff members are passionate about “Stop the Bleed,” a nation-wide initiative that teaches simple steps in proper bleeding control to the public and accident bystanders, before emergency professionals arrive. According to Lynn Marie Chabot, MS, RN, Emergency Department Clinical Practice Leader at the Wentworth-Douglass Hospital Emergency Room, the program started when the American College of Surgeons formed a consortium to help everyday people save lives with measures that control bleeding – and the training and confidence to use them: “We often think of major trauma incidents such as a mass shooting or the Boston Marathon bombing, but major bleeding can occur on a smaller, yet potentially life-threatening scale – in our homes and backyards, on a playground, at a car accident scene, or in a woodworking shop,” says Chabot.
While large-scale events were the original impetus for the national “Stop the Bleed” campaign, the reality is that “people need training to respond to bleeding emergencies close to home, such as landscaping and gardening accidents,” according to Weber. She cites children falling from monkey bars as an all-too-common cause of fractured limbs.
Seeing a need, Wentworth-Douglass’s Emergency Department offers Stop the Bleed training and resources to schools and community groups. “Stop the Bleed” kits are available free-of-charge to schools throughout our community and neighboring towns, made possible with funding from the Wentworth-Douglass Foundation. Each kit includes gloves, dressing, compression bandages, and an easy-to-use tourniquet.
“We bring our team to whoever wants the training, wherever they are. Our hope is to expand the network of people who have this training, and we’ll go anywhere to teach it – board rooms, bank lobbies. We were thrilled to train camp counselors at The Works Family Health & Fitness Center in Somersworth last summer,” says Brian Nicholson, BS, NRP, EMS Coordinator.
Chabot says that participants are impressed with how much they learn and how easy it is to make a difference – at home or when they are out and about: “People get so engaged. We’ve trained nurses and teachers in the Somersworth schools, and done outreach to all the local schools, including bus drivers, who want to be prepped for safety. We’re sharing a skill, and we’re taking the scary part out of it.”
To inquire about a Stop the Bleed training class, please call (603) 740-3372.