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Participants in the Stop the Bleed training

Stop the Bleed

What can ordinary bystanders do if a bleeding emergency unfolds in front of us? Plenty.

That’s what representatives of the Northeast Ohio Medical University Stop the Bleed student interest group taught University faculty and staff at a recent training session on campus. Lydia Du, a second-year College of Medicine student, led her fellow students in a hands-on training that demonstrated how to use a tourniquet — or create a makeshift one from available items like a scarf and a pen – to provide emergency help for serious bleeding.

Stop the Bleed is a national awareness campaign designed to encourage everyday people to become trained to help in a bleeding emergency.

Du and co-president Mackenzie Jackson started the campus training sessions last year, as a project of the Association of Women Surgeons, and then developed Stop the Bleed into its own student interest group. They’d like to go even bigger, to provide training to community members and also supply them with emergency kits, says Du.

Tiffany Marchand, M.D., assistant professor of surgery and a faculty advisor to the group, says the initiative is valuable for more than one reason. Leading training sessions teaches these medicine students how to teach. And considering the number of mass casualties that have happened on campuses, these are valuable skills for the students to know and communicate with others.