A training called Stop the Bleed helps civilians learn basic response techniques to help handle emergency hemorrhages. Here's how one instructor is bringing it to the suburbs.
One suburban emergency medical services expert is getting involved in a nationwide campaign to prepare the public to respond when someone is experiencing sudden and problematic bleeding.
By leading a free training program called Stop the Bleed, Ryan Klavohn is teaching school personnel how to assist should a bleeding issue arise - be it in a mass shooting, a car crash, a power tools mishap or any other medical emergency.
Klavohn, emergency medical services coordinator for Edward Hospital in Naperville and a firefighter/paramedic in Bolingbrook, taught one such training session Friday in West Aurora Unit District 129.
During the class, personnel from several Aurora schools learned how to use a tourniquet, pack a wound with gauze, apply direct pressure or use any other means necessary to assist if they ever encounter someone who is bleeding uncontrollably.
"When a person is experiencing a life-threatening hemorrhage, seconds matter," Klavohn said. "We are training and empowering the public ... to deploy these skills to save lives."
Klavohn is one of nearly 38,000 instructors in the Stop the Bleed program nationwide. The program started after the 2012 school shooting in Sandy Hook, Connecticut to give civilians basic bleeding control skills so they can help until paramedics arrive. It's now run as an initiative of the American College of Surgeons and the Hartford Consensus.
Local trainings have been provided in cooperation with the Edward Hospital Emergency Medical Services system, the Edward Hospital trauma department, the Naperville and Aurora fire departments and others.
"We are always looking for other avenues to host these classes," Klavohn said, "in schools or (for the) general public alike."