‘Stop the Bleed’ Campaign Comes to Baltimore Amid Record Violence
by
Wcbm
A mid a violent year in Baltimore, the University of Maryland Shock Trauma Center is spearheading a local initiative to teach health care workers and members of the public how to use critical care skills to stop life-threatening bleeding.
The “Stop The Bleed” campaign began in 2015 as a national effort to provide bystanders with training for emergency situations, said Thomas Scalea, physician-in-chief at Shock Trauma. It was partly a response to an autopsy review of the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, which revealed about 30 percent of the children who died during the attack may have survived if pressure had been applied to their wounds.
The effort has particular relevance and urgency in Baltimore given the city’s gun violence crisis. This year has been one of the deadliest in the city’s history; nearly 87 percent of the 212 homicides so far have involved a shooting.
