East Meadow PTA program offers lessons in CPR, ‘Stop the Bleed’

The East Meadow School District has been teaching its staff how to treat life-threatening wounds since the beginning of the school year. Those skills were shared with a couple of dozen district parents and students at a Save a Life workshop hosted by the Parent Teacher Association’s ACCESS Committee on Monday.

Participants, who were war-ned that the program included graphic content, gathered in the cafeteria at Bowling Green Elementary School for the workshop, which included a session called Stop the Bleed as well as training in cardiopulmonary resuscitation by local law enforcement officials and medical professionals. The program began with a slideshow featuring people with severe injuries, including blood-spurting flesh wounds, gaping leg gashes and a back full of bullet holes.

“Most of this is to desensitize you from what you’ve been told is gross and that you shouldn’t look at,” said Don Hudson, of the Nassau County Fire Police EMS Academy, which is run by Nassau University Medical Center.

When someone is bleeding profusely, a by-stander’s reaction is either to freeze or “spring into action,” Hudson said, explaining that 20 minutes of training could mean the difference between the two.

Stop the Bleed was launched by the federal De-partment of Homeland Security in October 2015 in response to the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., that left 26 children and adults dead — many of them due to blood loss, according to reports.

It can take only five minutes for someone with a life-threatening injury to bleed to death, according to professionals at NUMC. Stop the Bleed participants learn how to apply a tourniquet and “pack” a wound by stuffing it with gauze or cloth. Both methods are meant to suppress blood loss and keep a victim alive until he or she receives medical attention.

This is the first year that Nassau County teachers are taking part in the program, and East Meadow is the first district in the county to offer it to staff at all of its schools and extended it to students and their parents.

Project ACCESS (A Community Committed to Educating Students for Success), is an extension of the PTA Council, which sponsors educational workshops for parents throughout the school year.

“We really wanted to get the community involved in this,” said Robin Fitzpatrick, president of the PTA Council and an East Meadow Fire Department emergency medical technician. “Now some of our students have the skills to save lives, and they could talk about the program with their friends.”

Ilana Goldner, 16, who attended the program with her mother, Debra, said, “I want to learn how to save people if I need to.” She practiced tying a tourniquet on her mother’s arm before stopping and stifling a giggle. “I don’t want it to hurt you,” she said.

Hudson explained that tourniquets are supposed to hurt, because they must be tied tightly enough to cut off the flow of blood to the wound. Only a medically approved tourniquet should be used, he warned, adding that the alternative is to “pack” a wound by stuffing it with gauze or cloth.

Asked if any cloth could be used, even if it’s a dirty shirt, Hudson nodded and said, “We’ll deal with an infection tomorrow. Today we’re trying to get them to tomorrow.”