Run-hide-fight. . . Treat.
- You have car insurance. Not because you want to wreck your car but because it could happen.
- You have fire extinguishers and smoke detectors. Not because you’ve ever had a fire but because it could be catastrophic if you did and weren’t prepared.
- Maybe you’ve followed the Red Cross’s advice and have an emergency kit with 3 days or 2 weeks worth of supplies. Maybe you’ve been meaning to do so.
- Maybe you’ve taken a CPR course. Maybe you need to add some more skills and equipment to your skill set?
The world isn’t getting any safer. We should be confident that we can cross the street (Westminster Bridge, Nice), go to our schools (Virginia Tech, Columbine), places of Worship, (Sutherland Springs, Charleston), sporting events (Boston Marathon, Congressional baseball game), and music venues (Las Vegas, Paris Bataclan, Manchester), but the reality is we were never completely safe. Active shooter and active violent incidents are not the only cause of massive hemorrhage and the need for immediate medical interventions: car accidents, outdoor activities, can all cause life-threatening injuries both close to home and in remote areas.
Law enforcement arrives on average 4 minutes after the first 911 call; EMS arrives 4-10 minutes later.
In the first 10 minutes, any medical care is either performed by private citizen bystanders or law enforcement. Casualties can die without hemorrhage control and life-saving intervention while awaiting First Responders. The White House began the Stop the Bleed campaign in 2015 encouraging all Americans to obtain hemorrhage control training. Communities with more citizens who are trained to help in an emergency are more resilient.
An extremity wound with massive hemorrhage is generally entirely survivable if hemorrhage control techniques are properly and quickly applied. EMS probably won’t be there to help. Who will? Who will arrive to save you or your family? What if you could? What if you had the training and knowledge to put together an inexpensive kit that you could use to maximize your chances and those of your loved ones, to survive.
The first rule of casualty care is to keep yourself safe. If you get injured trying to help others, you’ve made the problem worse. It’s what we call ‘being a force multiplier for the enemy.’ You need to learn to stay safe and treat casualties so they can survive long enough to be attended to by higher medical providers like EMS, emergency departments, and trauma surgeons.
Tactical Casualty Care courses from Crisis Medicine will teach you these skills. Some currently popular first aid courses trying to fulfill the White House Stop the Bleed mission offers basic hemorrhage control. That is beneficial and hopefully, more bystanders will be able to use these skills learned in an hour or two to help casualties.
For those who want a more robust skill set, Crisis Medicine provides two courses: Essential Casualty Care, a foundational 2.5 hour course that covers a plan to deal with casualties using the MARCH mnemonic, and is framed around providing care from a public access hemorrhage control kit or simple IFAK, and our Tactical Casualty Care class, a 7.5-hour online course that teaches you more than just tourniquet application.
You’ll learn what to do, how to do it, and how best to address many of these critical injuries with minimal equipment, while the event is ongoing, and when the casualty will most need your help.
In these courses, you’ll watch dynamic lectures based on medical science, interwoven with photographs, real-world events from World War II through the Global War on Terror and domestic events. You’ll then have the opportunity to see hands-on demonstrations of the techniques, taught by a practicing emergency medicine physician and former Special Forces medic. Lastly, you’ll have the opportunity to see all the skills put together in theatrically filmed scenarios.
