Have you heard of the Stop the Bleed initiative? After the Sandy Hook school shooting, several professional and government groups (American College of Surgeons, National Security Council, US Military, FBI, etc) came together to form recommendations to save more lives during mass casualty events.

Stop the Bleed is an initiative that came from this group. Their goal is to train every American in basic bleeding control techniques. When there are accidents that cause bleeding, or mass casualty events, many of the deaths come from bleeding that wasn’t stopped.

There is often a period of time after bleeding starts before professional help is able to arrive. In a school shooting situation, it can be many hours before the scene is cleared for healthcare workers to come onto the scene. Help given by lay people before EMS arrives can be life saving!

The other goal of the Stop the Bleed initiative is to place bleeding control kits around the community in places like schools, churches, stadiums, and community centers.

Stop the Bleed has over 40,000 instructors worldwide. There are several professions that are able to be certified instructors of this program, and chiropractic is one of those professions! Chiropractic is concerned with health, and preventing life-threatening problems. We are honored to be on the list of possible Stop the Bleed instructors. It is a powerful thing when different healthcare professionals work together towards the common good.

We want to push this initiative forward in our community, so we are holding a Stop the Bleed class in our office this week – Thursday, September 19th at 5:30pm. It is a free class. It only takes 30 minutes to learn how to save a life from a bleeding emergency!