Teachers' new skill: how to stop bleeding

Teachers across the US are learning techniques to help victims of school shootings survive by stemming blood loss.

Trauma care specialist Brian Feist and Dr. Richard Sidwell

Teachers in schools are learning skills such as packing wounds and applying tourniquets. (AAP)

With school shootings now a regular occurrence, educators across the US are learning techniques to help victims survive by stemming blood loss.

A Connecticut doctor who treated children killed in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012 helped launch the effort, dubbed Stop the Bleed.

The nonprofit program has spread to all 50 states, with more than 125,000 teachers, counsellors and school administrators learning skills such as applying direct pressure, packing wounds and applying tourniquets.

At a recent training at a Des Moines-area high school, teachers peppered trauma care specialist Brian Feist with questions such as how to help wounded children too small for a tourniquet or with multiple wounds.

Students now regularly have shooter drills. Now, teachers say, the battlefield training provides another way to help victims survive.


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Source: AAP



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