Riverside, CA – Riverside Community Hospital celebrated 5 years of teaching critical lifesaving skills through our Stop the Bleed classes on January 9, 2022. The program was brought to Riverside Community Hospital (RCH) by Wendy McEuen, RN and Injury Prevention Coordinator in the hospital’s Trauma Department.
Stop the Bleed is a national awareness campaign and call-to-action intended to encourage bystanders to become trained, equipped and empowered to help in a bleeding emergency before professional medical help arrives. Wendy has worked with over 100 community partners, including local law enforcement, schools and civic organizations and has trained over 7,000 people on life saving techniques in the 5 years the program has been active.
It can take an ambulance up to 8 minutes to arrive at a scene. A person can bleed to death in under 5 minutes. Learning the skills taught in the Stop the Bleed course can save lives, increase awareness and empower people to act. “Stop the Bleed is an important program that needed to reach our community,” said Wendy McEuen. “Every person has the ability to potentially save a life in an emergency with these basic techniques. The first step is believing you can make a difference and then take action!”
In the class, Wendy provides hands-on practice applying direct pressure to a wound, packing a wound with gauze and applying a tourniquet. With this preparation, time is instilled as the most critical factor to saving a life. Wendy follows a curriculum developed specifically for the average non-clinical person, similar to how CPR classes have been taught throughout our communities for decades. Her hope is that Stop the Bleed courses will become as commonplace as it’s cardiac counterpart.
“Seven-thousand people,” exclaimed David Plurad, MD and Trauma Medical Director at RCH. “That’s 7,000 more people in our community prepared to step in and help a bleeding victim if needed. I think that’s a monumental accomplishment for injury prevention awareness.”
And RCH’s Stop the Bleed course is expanding outside the Inland Empire. Most recently, Wendy went down to Hotel del Coronado in San Diego to train the staff in bleeding control techniques.
About Stop the Bleed®
The American College of Surgeons (ACS) STOP THE BLEED® program is administered by the ACS Committee on Trauma (ACS COT). The ACS COT, formed in 1922, has put forth a continuous effort to improve care of injured patients in our society. Today trauma activities are administered through an 86-member committee overseeing a field force of more than 3,500 Fellows who are working to develop and implement meaningful programs for trauma care in local, regional, national, and international arenas. With programs such as its STOP THE BLEED® Course, the COT strives to improve the care of injured patients before, during, and after hospitalization.