April 20, 2018 – Stop the Bleed

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Anchor lead: Intervening when someone is bleeding may make the difference between life and death, Elizabeth Tracey reports

Stop the Bleed is the name of a national campaign to increase awareness of major bleeding events and teach people what they can do about it. Matthew Levy, an emergency medicine expert at Johns Hopkins and a campaign spokesperson, explains.

Levy: Stop the Bleed is really about what people can do until help arrives, and empowering the lay public with knowledge, skills, and the resources to actually intervene upon somebody bleeding. Severe bleeding represents the single biggest opportunity to impact survival for traumatically injured patients. Trauma is the number one killer for individuals less than 46, and within that severe bleeding has been shown to be the single larger opportunity to minimize preventable death.  :26

Levy says the basic idea is to stop the bleeding, using your hands, dressings that may be available, or tourniquets, until emergency responders arrive. The campaign hopes to place kits in public places with easy to follow instructions. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.