John H. Ward | Buy at photos.MonroeCountyJournal.com
Amory police officer Lavon Griffin, center, practices packing a wound while instructor Traci Callicut observes during a training course on bleeding kits for first responders.
By John H. Ward
Monroe Journal
AMORY – At first glance, the session resembled passengers listening to an onboard safety briefing from flight attendants before take-off from the runway.
However, the accompanying slideshow was not for the faint-of-heart or for those with weak stomachs, but the training was vital for saving lives. Eleven officers from the Amory police and fire departments and Monroe County Sheriff’s Office attended a workshop last week at City Hall to receive training for their newly issued bleeding control kits.
Donna Grisham and Traci Callicut from the North Mississippi Trauma System combined slides, lectures and hands-on demonstrations with their students to learn how to use the equipment not only properly, but quickly when lives are in danger. Review questions were repeated periodically during the class to reinforce important points.
“Arterial bleeding will cause death in three minutes,” said Grisham, who is the regional administrator for North Mississippi Trauma System. “Two lives have been saved already with this training.”
“Our mission is to train the nearly 2,000 police officers, sheriffs’ deputies and firefighters in our 18-county service area across Northeast Mississippi,” Callicut said.
Grisham identified the equipment in the bleeding control packets, including a tourniquet, vinyl gloves, dressing and gauze packing. The class was instructed to achieve proficiency in applying the tourniquet with only one hand in no more than 15 seconds.
“No cheating,” admonished Grisham, as the officers first applied a tourniquet on themselves and then on a partner.
“The tourniquet must be tightened above the wound site until bleeding stops, and it’s going to hurt,” Grisham said.
Supplementing the slideshow was an object lesson on the table – a loin of meat in a tin baking tray with a supply of bright red soda draining into a crevice in the cut of meat through a tube from a 2-liter bottle to simulate an open wound through which blood was being lost.
Officers were called around the table to individually practice packing gauze into the simulated wound to stop the bleeding.