Stop the Bleed: A nurse-driven community outreach initiative

Abstract

Introduction: As part of a national public health initiative, our Level I Trauma Center has committed to training the public in bleeding control (B-Con) as part of the Stop the Bleed (StB) campaign. Our primary objectives were for nurse-led teams to present course materials to people with no healthcare background and to evaluate the impact of this training by participants' perceived ability to respond to life-threatening bleeding. Methods: We initially launched trainings for hospital medical staff, followed by courses for community members, business entities, and academic institutions. Trainings consisted of a 30-minute lecture, followed by a skills session during which participants practiced wound compression, wound packing, and tourniquet application. Participants completed pre- and posttraining questionnaires to assess learning. Answers were scored on a five-point Likert scale. Results were entered into Qualtrics (Provo, UT). Results: A total of 345 laypersons attended 43 StB training sessions. Nurses participated as skills' instructors at 100% of the trainings. Sixty-one percent of participants had previous cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) or first aid training, while 9% reported prior B-Con training. Seventy-three percent of participants reported increased confidence in responding to an emergency medical situation after training, and 86% reported increased confidence in their ability to stop someone from bleeding. Conclusion: Nurses are well equipped to teach healthcare topics in a community-based setting and represent an ideal instructor pool for the large-scale implementation of StB. Given the positive impact of this program, nurses should continue to play a crucial role in growing this nationwide hemorrhage control campaign. The following core competencies are addressed in this article: Practice-based learning and improvement, Communication skills, and Medical knowledge.