Class 38 will place more than 100 bleed control kits

Leadership Greer Class 38 is putting a focus on emergency preparedness in the City of Greer.

Along with installing more than 40 AED units, the class is also distributing around 100 bleed control kits through the Greer area.

Mike Walls, Trauma Injury Prevention & Outreach Coordinator, and Ashley Metcalf, Trauma Nurse, trained Greer Mayor Rick Danner and a few other local community members on how to use the bleed control kits at a recent training exercise.

The kits are stocked with a tourniquet, gauze or trauma dressing, compressed gauze, gloves, a marker to write the time on the gauze, and trauma sheers in order to locate the bleeding sites.

“I would venture a guess that Greer may be the first city in SC (South Carolina) to have 40 AED’s and over 100 Stop the Bleed kits distributed throughout the city,” Danner said. “We may be the most ‘prepared’ city in the state for a major medical event thanks to Leadership Greer class.”

The majority of the Leadership Greer class trained on March 31 with North American Rescue, a company based in Greer with a mission to decrease preventable deaths worldwide through innovative casualty care solutions.

“This was National ‘Stop the Bleed’ Day, and we received the certification training,” said Heather Timanus, Class President. “We were able to practice with tourniquets and were taught how to pack a wound.”

“It was very beneficial training,” she said. “In the event of an accident, I believe we would be able to respond and hopefully change the outcome of a bad situation.”

Bleed control kits have been placed in every school throughout Spartanburg and Greenville counties as part of the “Stop the Bleed” campaign, initiated by a federal interagency workgroup convened by the National Security Council Staff, The White House, to build national resilience by better preparing the public to save lives by raising awareness of basic actions to stop life threatening bleeding following everyday emergencies and man-made and natural disasters, according to wwwbleedingcontrol.org.

“They were talking about how there’s going to be a grant for school buses,” said Walls, who is a local contact for Stop the Bleed training.

Walls can be reached at mwalls@ghs.org or 455-5313 to set up a free Stop the Bleed training course.

“All the trauma centers will be doing the training and helping out with that through the whole state,” Walls said.

“We’ve been doing training already for the schools in our area,” Walls said. “I did some training with school resource officers.”

The Stop the Bleed campaign kicked off following the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14, 2012, in Connecticut, where 20-year-old Adam Lanza fatally shot 20 children between six and seven years old as well as six adult staff members.

“There was a trauma surgeon who was there, heard about the incident, was prepared to get the patients, didn’t get any patients, found out why,” said Metcalf, who is married to Mark Metcalf in this year’s Leadership Greer class.

“Patients were inside,” she said. “First responders couldn’t get to them because of the security warning. This is arming bystanders that are there and are with the person to act as first responders until first responders can get there.”

Since then, multiple shootings have continued the push to get bystanders ready to lend aid in an active shooter or emergency situation.

“It’s good to get the hands on portion to see what it actually feels like,” Metcalf said. “It just helps to give the community member knowledge.”

“They feel more empowered,” she said. “It was great when we did the Stop the Bleed program at the hospital.”

That training took place on March 31, National Stop the Bleed Day, and about 100 people were trained.

“It’s something that you can use with motor vehicle collisions, with pedestrians, with falls, with work place incidents,” Metcalf said. “We have many trauma patients that come in that have these (tourniquets).”

For more information about Stop the Bleed, visit www.bleedingcontrol.org. For more information about North American Rescue, visit www.narescue.com.