Teachers Learn Lifesaving Method

WILDWOOD – Wildwood School District teachers learned to pack wounds and stop bleeding using tourniquets March 9 in a national initiative developed in response to mass school shootings. 
Teachers took turns stuffing gauze into fake gashes on dummy legs as Fire Capt. Jim Grauel checked everyone’s technique in the high school classroom.
“Direct pressure requires pressure,” he coached the class. “You want to get on top of that wound and press it until medical professionals arrive.”
Grauel trained 36 teachers in the Stop the Bleed course originally started by surgeons to educate civilians on lifesaving techniques once reserved for military and medical use.
Since Stop the Bleed started in 2013, after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, over 120,000 people have taken the course, according to the American College of Surgeons.
Grauel’s class was the first bleeding control class taught in Cape May County.
“I work with 3-, 4-, 5-year-olds, and if something happened I wanted to be able to help them out,” said special education aide Vernice Ashton, who took the class.
Although the course was developed in response to a rise in mass shootings and terrorism, Grauel reminded trainees that bleeding control knowledge can most commonly save victims of home injuries, work-related injuries, and car crashes.
“[Wildwood’s police and fire departments] run into trauma all the time,” Grauel said. “We’ve never had a mass casualty event, but… these techniques can be used and have saved lives in the past.”
A day before the class, an off-duty state trooper rescued an Atlantic City Expressway crash victim with a makeshift tourniquet using a t-shirt and tree branch on the victim’s bleeding arm.
Grauel said Wildwood police now carry tourniquets in their cars.
“Arm and leg wounds are the most preventable death from injuries,” Grauel said.
Each trainee tried strapping a tourniquet onto his or her own arm and leg before tightening it onto a dummy leg, three inches above the wound, and turning the windlass rod tightly.
Grauel reminded trainees to keep turning until the bleeding stops. If unsure whether a tourniquet is needed, he told them, use it anyway because it won’t cause damage.
“A lot of times, the pressure is causing pain for the patients,” he said. “They’re going to say, ‘Can you not press as hard?’
“Yes, I have to press this hard, this is controlling your bleeding, this is saving your life,” he continued.
Grauel will begin teaching the free, hour-long class to the public every month at the fire hall starting March 31, which marks National Stop the Bleed Day.
The fire department started its bleeding control initiative after Grauel and Chief Daniel Speigel attended a seminar last year about active shooters in schools, Grauel said.
A principal from Columbine High School and a first responder from Sandy Hook gave firsthand accounts. Speakers made many references to the Hartford Consensus, surgeons’ recommendations for increasing survival rates in mass casualty events, Grauel said.
He said he researched the Consensus and adapted two recommendations to Wildwood: police and fire departments integrating response to active shooters, and “empowering” the public to “take action” on preventable traumas.
Grauel said bleeding control training should be required for everyone.
“It’s definitely not something that anybody’s comfortable with, you don’t ever get comfortable with it,” he said. “But this sort of training helps with that.”
To contact Taylor Henry, email thenry@cmcherald.com.