Can You ‘Stop the Bleed’?

Reconsidering tourniquets.

Bystanders apply pressure to woman’s leg to stop bleeding after explosion at 117th Boston Marathon. Photo by John Tlumacki / Boston Globe via Getty Images.

Have you ever used a windlass tourniquet? I had never even heard of one until recently. The only tourniquets I knew were fashioned from belts, scarves, or neckties, and we were always admonished to use these sparingly, because it was thought that they could cause severe damage to a limb.

In “Leading the Effort to Promote Bleeding Control in Our Communities” in this month’s AJN, James Reed and Margaret Carman dispel myths about tourniquets and share the growing evidence for their safety.

They also introduce us to the Stop the Bleed campaign. Hemorrhage is the second-leading cause of death (head injury, the first) after a traumatic injury, and when an extremity is the source of bleeding, rapid tourniquet application saves lives.

“More than 50,000 casualties sustained in the wars in Central and Southwest Asia have provided evidence that recognizing hemorrhage and controlling it should be the highest priority in caring […]

2019-05-16T12:15:52-04:00May 16th, 2019|Nursing, Public health|0 Comments

Hospital Shootings: Unacknowledged Job Hazard?

Julianna Paradisi, RN, OCN, is an oncology nurse navigator and writes a monthly post for this blog. Illustration by the author.

Active_shooter_post_illustrationRecently, while preparing for work, I received the following text from a coworker already at the hospital:

We’re on lockdown
Armed gunman
Stay home, they announced “active shooter now outside building”

Shocked, barely able to comprehend the message, I texted back:

WTF?
Are you safe?

She texted back that she and others were in lockdown in the cafeteria. Numbly, I switched on the TV, looking for more information, but found nothing. Not a single report of the event on any station. Turning to the Internet, I found a single tweet referring to an event in progress. Feeling helpless, I texted my husband and daughter and then called my mom, letting them know I was at home, safe, just in case they heard something. Then I waited.

Within an hour, the same coworker texted again:

All clear!

I stared at my phone, not knowing what to do. I went to work.

The resolution of the shooting situation was heartbreaking. However, no patients or hospital staff were harmed. The outcome could have been much worse.

That evening, local media coverage of the crisis remained scant to the point I nearly felt I’d imagined it. It was as though it never happened.

We were lucky. Our shooting occurred outside, on the hospital grounds—as do 41% of hospital shootings, […]

Remembering 9/11: Nurses Were There

By Shawn Kennedy, editor-in-chief

One can find many commemorative events for the 10th anniversary of 9/11 being held in those places (New York City, Washington, DC, and Shanksville, Pennsylvania) where planes hit, and in other cities as well. Some are appropriate and done well and others are (at least to me) over-the-top and tactless—like one New York City radio station playing tapes of the confusion and chaos from first responder radio transmissions; families and friends of victims don’t need to hear that and think of what their loved ones were going through in their final moments.

How we saw it then. AJN’s offices are located in New York City. In 2001, we could see the burning World Trade Center from our windows and we wrote about about our experiences and thoughts. We knew nurses would be in the forefront of responding to help, so we reached out to nurses here in New York and in the Washington, DC, area in order to report on what nurses there were doing. And we also carried a Viewpoint essay, in which one of our Muslim colleagues reported on the backlash that she was experiencing and made a plea for tolerance.

Our current coverage. In planning this September issue, we wanted to acknowledge the events in some way—hence our cover (thumbnail illustraton above) by artist and nurse Charlie Kaiman, who witnessed the events (see also his artwork from 2001 conveying that […]

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