Basic First Aid: Controlling Bleeding

Video Transcript

"Hi, I’m Amy, and today we are going to be talking about controlling the bleeding. Nita here, we are going to suppose that she has a wound to her arm. The first thing we are going to do if somebody is bleeding, it is always good because you never know whether or not if somebody’s body fluid are infected, so you want to treat all blood and body fluids as if they are infected even if you know the victim. So if you have gloves it is great. Put on a pair of gloves. If you don’t have gloves, you can ask the victim to go ahead and press their hand against the wound. You can use other materials such as T-shirts or a towel that is handy. Kitchen towels are probably the most common thing that people grab at their house. If you happen to have a first aid kit, which is highly recommended for people to have in their homes, you can go ahead and press the gauze pad against the wound, applying direct pressure. Most bleeding will stop with direct pressure alone. In order to secure the gauze, it is always nice to have a roll of bandage. Place the roll of bandage against the wound and gently roll it around until you secure the gauze. It is always good to check for feeling, warmth and color of the fingers before and after you dress the wound. You want to make sure that you are not wrapping the gauze pad too tightly because if you are, you actually turn the gauze to a tourniquet, which you don’t want to do, and you never want to apply a tourniquet to any bleeding no matter how severe it is unless the decision has been made to sacrifice a limb on this side of the injury. Once you have secured that, it is always nice to keep your arm elevated. It helps to control the flow of blood. Try and keep that direct pressure on the wound. If that is not working and it is still bleeding through, you can also, especially with a wound in the arm, there is an artery inside the arm there ,and you can find that artery by feeling for the pulse with your finger tips and press their artery against the bone. The victim can very often tell you whether or not if you’ve located it because they should start to feel their fingers tingle and lose a bit of sensation and Nita is nodding her head, “yes, my fingers are tingling,” and then you want to gradually release that periodically because again you don’t want to completely stop the flow of blood to the arm. You can also apply another gauze pad. “If you can, hold that arm for me? Feel comfortable doing that?” Then you can always apply more and more direct pressure. If it is a gaping wound, that is the edges of the wound do not close, if it is bleeding severely or if it appears that it is going to need stitches, I would recommend that the person be transported to the hospital to be checked out by a doctor."