Sweet, there are classes near(ish) me!
Thank you for sharing this organization.
-Blast

I think I have calmed down now, the first story had my blood boiling. That was border criminal negligence . I don’t care about the politics.

As I understand it, DaveL, medical first responders in the USA are required by law to follow the medical orders and standards of care set by the EMS systems they are associated with. What happened to Ms. Gardner was a tragedy, but it was one of bad policy and law.

It’s worth saying out loud that you didn’t say otherwise.

In reply to...do I use chainsaw chaps?

Yes, after my niece, who is a forester, chewed me out. I got a small scar on a knee from starting a saw up off the ground, and it dipped a bit. Learned my lesson before anything serious happened.

Follow up to the original WSJ Opinion story -

Letter to the Editor of the WSJ by Gerald Holmquist, 12/28/20 -

Regarding Frank K. Butler and John B. Holcomb’s advocacy for the tourniquet (“The Military Learned to Stop the Bleeding,” op-ed, Dec. 21): My fraternity at the University of Chicago, Phi Delta Theta, was geared toward physics, not parties. Fiscally constrained, we took in the occasional boarder. Rick Ames was one. We soon recognized him as a seldom-bathed alcoholic and searched for an excuse to kick him out.

One night in 1962 we found it—and then some. Rick severed an artery by jabbing his forearm through one of the house’s glass windows. A serpentine trail led me and a friend to a pool of blood.

Equally intense emotions of disgust and sympathy pulled me in opposite directions, but my Boy Scout training took over. I squeezed a pressure point to stop the bleeding and tourniqueted Rick’s arm, noting the time in huge magic-marker letters on his forehead.

Rick was wrapped in plastic garbage bags, carried over the rugs of the foyer and driven to the emergency room in some reluctant brother’s automobile. The next day our boarder’s bags were gone, his key was returned and he was forgotten.

It turns out Rick’s father was a CIA agent who eventually got Rick into the agency. From there Aldrich “Rick” Ames became the most notorious mole in CIA history, betraying at least 12 of America’s best secret agents in the Soviet bloc. Many of them were executed. Alas, I was a few pints of blood away from saving these fellows, but my Boy Scout training doomed them. The tourniquet works.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/sometimes-the-tourniquet-works-all-too-well-11609097138 [Pay wall]

Yet another tourniquet story -

After an elderly woman named Tokiko Ahuso was bitten by a deadly viper on Nov. 6 in Kin, a town in the Okinawa Prefecture of Japan, U.S. Marine Sgt. John James sprung into action and rendered first aid. Thanks to his efforts she survived, and on Dec. 23, Ahuso attended an award ceremony for James at Camp Hansen, Okinawa.

- - - -

. . . Ahuso was bitten by a habu viper. Okinawa is home to 24 snakes, eight of which are venomous, and of those, four are habu, and each one poses a real danger to people.

- - - -

. . . James and some friends were outside grilling burgers and hot dogs when they heard a sudden commotion as Ahuso yelled out "habu, habu!" After a call was placed to emergency services, James used a friend’s belt to tie a tourniquet two inches above the snake’s bite marks -- he credits his quick thinking to the training he received as an embassy guard.

"We did medical training once every week for three years for embassy attack training, and a lot of the training goes into how to apply a tourniquet or do CPR," he said.

After emergency services arrived they were able to find the snake, and in doing so, identified the correct anti-venom to treat Ahuso’s wound.

[Full article at link]

https://www.military.com/daily-news/2020...RC=eb_201229.nl

As a Vascular Surgeon dealing with trauma for 33 years I agree that although not ususally necessary, a tourniquet is very useful and almost never harmful if removed within a couple of hours (or more). Direct pressure almost always works but often people put a bunch of gauze on a wound and apply pressure with their palm which usually allows a person to bleed to death without squirting on you. Even one or two fingers deep in a wound on the vessel itself stops most bleeding (for extremities). Tourniquets do cause severe ischemic pain to limbs- but don't take them off until ready for the operating room (in most cases) unless another means of control is available.

The CoTCCC protocol I have been taught is that once a TK goes on, only someone like you should take it off.