RIVERSIDE

Your average elementary schooler’s body contains about 5.5 pints of blood. Your average woman: 9 pints. Your average man: 12 pints. And when it starts to spill or spurt out of us, it is alarming at best and deadly at worst.

A recent investigation by The Dallas Morning News and the Antonio Express-News found that “traumatic injuries kill more children and adults under age 45 than any other cause,” and that about one-third of these wounds would have been survivable with rapid treatment.

“In most potentially preventable trauma deaths, patients bled out before their injuries could be treated,” the study found.

Making sure Washington County is equipped to do everything it can to prevent loss of life in a mass casualty event, whether perpetrated by humans or nature, is one of Marissa Reisen’s tasks as the Washington County Emergency Management Coordinator. Providing all county schools with Stop the Bleed kits was one thing she, along with local law enforcement, first responders, and healthcare organizations, saw as simple and easy step.

The Washington County Riverboat Foundation agreed, and in Spring 2024 they awarded WCEM a $22,476 grant to provide the kits for local schools. All of the schools’ PTOs pitched in with matching funds, and now the kits are arriving and school staff are being trained on how to stop bleeding in the event of injury.

On Friday, Sept. 27, school nurse Cindy Peiffer led Highland Schools staff through Stop the Bleed training. They started with a video outlining the three techniques that would be demonstrated – holding pressure, packing a deep wound, and putting on a tourniquet – and their usefulness, not only at school, but in everyday life.

When one thinks about it, injuries are fairly common at the workplace, on the playground, and at home. Intuitively, we know to hold pressure on that finger slice from the meat cutter, bleeding forehead from falling off the monkey bars, or gushing calf from a dog bite. In Stop the Bleed training, we’re “being given permission to do it on somebody else. So [we’re] being empowered,” the surgeon in the video explained.

Of course, we can’t overlook the elephant in the room. Mass casualties from school shootings are a deep concern and a strong motivator for having the Stop the Bleed kits in classrooms.

“These events have become more frequent and are not something that rural communities can ignore because we think ‘It won’t happen here,’” Reisen wrote in her grant application to the Riverboat foundation. “I regularly repeat my mantra that Emergency Preparedness is a balance between wanting to have a resource and hoping that you’ll never need to use it.”

Whatever sorts of needs arise – and Peiffer had a few memorable stories about treating students before medical help arrived – the Highland staff should now be more comfortable knowing there is a kit near every classroom door filled with supplies that they know how to use. Even the somewhat intimidating tourniquet.

“They used to say, never ever put a tourniquet on unless you’re prepared to lose an arm or leg. That’s not true anymore,” Peiffer reassured the group, adding that limb loss would be preferable to death, in the event it came to that.

“Ok, let’s practice,” she said, and the group got out their wounded foam arms, bandages, and tourniquets, and simulated what it would be like to stop the bleed.

It’s empowering and reassuring to know that the three simple steps that anyone can do could save lives, right here in Washington County, at our schools and beyond.