By JEFFREY SMITH
Leader staff writer
Stopping bleeding within the first 10 minutes of a trauma can help save a person’s life.
MEMS special operation supervisor Clayton Goddard led a bleeding-control first-aid training session for school nurses on Wednesday at the Cabot High School Fine Arts Auditorium.
There were 165 school nurses attending two sessions in Cabot and 60 at Springdale. Training stations had instructors from the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, Arkansas Children’s Hospital and law enforcement. There are 900 public school nurses in the state.
Nurses learned how to teach other school employees how to compress wounds, use tourniquets and pack wounds with gauze to stop bleeding.
“Seventy-five to 90 percent of trauma-related deaths occur before the injured reaches the hospital. Ambulances do not carry blood,” Goddard said.
An adult body has five liters of blood. Depending on the artery it can bleed out within three to 10 minutes.
The goal is to make life saving blood control as common as CPR and have bleeding kits next to automated external defibrillators. A kit cost $550 and has tourniquets, compression bandages, chest seals, quick clot gauze dressing, scissors and medical gloves.
Cabot School District nursing coordinator Vonda Morgan said, “This is a new program for the school. We’ve never used tourniquets and are now learning about them to stop bleeding. It’s about saving a life instead of saving a limb.”
She said a kit will be at every campus, eventually installed in every building.
The Arkansas Department of Heath and Arkansas Children’s Hospital are working on funding to make the stop-bleeding kits and training available in all schools in the state.
“One-hundred percent of Cabot staff will be trained to stop the bleed. We need to be prepared,” Morgan said.
She said in her 23 years at Cabot, there have been no traumatic situations with students.
“We are trying to give teachers and staff the information to ease anxiety and help instead of standing back and doing nothing,” Morgan said.