There are three ways to stop bleeding by compressing.
#1: First is just holding pressure. If you have access to gloves, you want to put those on before you render any care. If you don’t have gloves, you want to clean your hands first.
You have access to gauze that is great but if you do not, any clean cloth, a clean towel or a t-shirt will work just as well. You want to take the gauze or the clean cloth and fold it and place it directly over the wound.
You want to put the heel of one hand on the cloth and the heel of your other hand on top of your first hand and lean in, put as much pressure on the wound as you can.
You want to stay this way until help arrives. You just want to hold pressure until the pre-hospital personnel can arrive and take over care.
#2: The second principle of compress is using tourniquets. Tourniquets are used when you have life-threatening bleeding to an arm or a leg.
If you have access to a bleeding control kit, they will have tourniquets in them. This is a what’s known as a cat tourniquet and is the most common tourniquet that is placed in those kits.
The first step is to unfold the band and take the circle and place it on the limb over the sight of the bleeding. It’s really important that you go above the wound and you also want to go above a knee or an elbow.
It is okay to put it on top of clothing. Make sure there’s nothing bulky in a pocket like keys that would impact the tension placing on the tourniquet.
You want to take the velcro strap and tighten it down on the limb. It just has to be snug. You are then going to notice there is a rod that is attached to the tourniquet
Once you have the velcro strap snug on the limb, you want to turn the rod as tight as you can.
You’re going to twist until you cannot twist anymore and it is very tight. Once you can no longer tighten the rod, you’re going to place it in the c-clip to hold the rod in place
You then can take what’s left with the strap and place it on top of the rod through the strap.
Many of the tourniquets will have another velcro strap that you can place over the c-clamp. Tourniquets are very painful and it’s okay to tell the injured person that this is going to hurt.
You do not want to loosen it. You want to leave it as it is until the pre-hospital providers take over care. They can give the person pain medicine to help with the pain but it is normal for them to feel significant pain after the tourniquet has been placed.
#3: The third principle to compress is wound packing. Again if you have access to gauze that is great but if you do not any clean cloth t-shirt can be used as well
What we’re going to do here is actually insert the gauze or the clean cloth into the wound to stop bleeding.
You want to take the end of the gauze or a cloth and actually pack the wound. You want to use your fingers to place the gauls tightly and is deeply into the wound as you possibly can.
And you’re going to continue to Pat until you cannot get any more gauze or cloth into the wound. Once you have packed it as tightly as you can you then want to compress with pressure
You want to put what’s left or your gauze or t-shirt on top of the wound apply the heel of your hand, the hill or your other hand on top of that and lean and apply direct pressure.
