Do you carry a tourniquet? How about Hemostatic Combat Gauze (a.k.a. QuikClot)? What about an Emergency Trauma Wound Dressing (a.k.a. Israeli Bandage). Have you recently refreshed your skills on their proper application? If your answer to those questions is yes, then I applaud you. I hope you’ve also checked to ensure that your partner, your shift supervisor, and even your family members are squared away too.
If your answer to any/all of the above is negative, this tip is especially for you.
One year ago this month, Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev set off two very simple, homemade pressure cooker bombs on Boylston Street, near the finish line of the Boston Marathon.
A few days after the attack, I wrote a column on how public safety responders and ordinary citizens used improvised tourniquets — such as belts, shirts, and other materials — to stem the worst of the bleeding of some of the most severely wounded victims.
Multiple people have told me that nearly all the tourniquets used that day were improvised — one website stated recently that “of the 27 tourniquets applied, 26 were improvised.” I’ve not been able to independently confirm this, but it squares with what I’ve been told.
It also matches what Joseph Blansfield — Boston Medical Center’s trauma program manager said in an Associated Press article following the attack.
“Without a doubt, tourniquets were a difference-maker and saved lives,” Blansfield said, adding that bleeding was stanched and patients “arrived in a better physiologic state and didn’t require as much resuscitation as they otherwise would.”
In my column last year I made the assertion that every officer should select a tourniquet (or have one selected by your agency quartermaster), seek and attend quality training on its use (and its non-use), and strap it to their person (options for this emerge every day).
Boston cops began carrying tourniquets very soon after the attacks. Earlier this year, we reported that Philadelphia PD purchased 5,000 tourniquets for their officers. We also reported recently that a “Downed Officer Kit” — comprised of the abovementioned tourniquet, anti-clotting gauze, and pressure bandage — possibly prevented a Dallas cop from bleeding to death after he was shot three times.
These kits are definitely making their way into the hands of more and more officers, but we’re not done yet. An officer who was shot recently in San Francisco was taken to the hospital with an improvised tourniquet on his arm. That sort of “battlefield improvisation” works, no doubt about it, but the optimal solution is to have the right tools, training, and tactics.
Use the upcoming anniversary of the Boston Marathon bombing to talk with your leaders and administrators (and you leaders and administrators, talk with your elected officials) about getting this done for your department.
Those two Chechen brothers killed three innocent people and uninjured more than 250 others, but the death toll could have been a lot higher were it not for the quick thinking and fast action of those people inventing tourniquets on the fly that day.
If anyone still needs ‘proof positive’ that tourniquets save lives, perhaps they should go talk with a survivor of the Boston Marathon bombing.
