Stop the Bleed

Students and staff at Grafton High School last week learned lifesaving skills to help remedy a harsh reality occurring in schools these days. 

On Wednesday, Feb. 13, professionals of Froedtert Hospital in Wauwatosa instructed 32 students during a Stop the Bleed seminar, which demonstrated how to pack wounds and apply tourniquets.

“With the increasing amount of school shootings, mass casualties and accidents, it’s good to have this type of knowledge to help someone,” said junior Leah McKelvey, chairman of the seminar. “The amount of lives you can save is tremendous.”

The event was a service project for students participating in the Future Health Professionals program, which is mentored by science teacher Fran Grant.

Grant has been a teacher for 27 years — 26 at Grafton — and never thought she would have to teach her students these types of lessons. 

“It’s the type of world we live in now. You never know what can happen and it’s important to understand these lifesaving skills,” Grant said. “Unfortunately, with everything you see in the news, these things happen and they happen everywhere.”

McKelvey agreed. “A lot of it is common sense, but it’s not until you actually practice it that you fully understand how to do it,” she said.

Grant and McKelvey said they planned the event for it to occur right before Valentine’s Day because they thought it would be an interesting topic to teach more about the heart and circulatory system. Coincidentally, Feb. 14 is also the one-year anniversary of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., where 17 people were killed.

McKelvey said it was an eye-opening experience for her peers and she wants to have more Stop the Bleed seminars at the school because the lessons can be applied to a variety of life-threatening situations.

“One person in our group is a deer hunter, and he said these types of skills are very necessary,” McKelvey said. “We also learned if a small child is bleeding, you need to hold the wound with your hands as tight as you can.”

Students learned a person can bleed out internally even if there isn’t a visible sign of blood and tourniquets can be applied for hours without causing harm to the injured.

“A lot of people thought it was harmful to have a tourniquet on for a long period of time, but we learned you can have one on for 12 hours,” Grant said. 

The students applied the tourniquets on each other, and used an artificial limb to learn about wound packing.

“We learned not to peek when you are compressing on a wound. It can be very dangerous because that could break up the clot,” Grant said.

Grant said she is seeking financial assistance with a plan to equip every classroom in the school with Stop the Bleed Kits, which contain a tourniquet and wound packing materials. The cost of a kit ranges from $62 to $139, but through Froedtert, they can be purchased for schools at a discounted price of $20 to $30.    

“We heard some schools have eight kits in every classroom. We were like, ‘Really?’ but that makes sense,” Grant said.

Eventually, Grant and McKelvey want to have an all-school assembly to teach everyone how to be a lifesaver. They said Stop the Bleed training goes hand-in-hand with basic first-aid skills such as cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR).  

“Everyone at Stop the Bleed took to heart what this means,” McKelvey said. “We never want to be in that situation, but we are better off now knowing what to do.”