First, assess your environment to see if you’re protected to reply, says Jeffrey Luk, MD, director of prehospital and catastrophe drugs at College Hospitals Cleveland Medical Middle in Cleveland, Ohio. Is there nonetheless lively hearth? Is the gunman gone? It’s essential to verify in and take into consideration whether or not you’re feeling able to responding below the circumstances.
“You’ll be able to’t assist anybody in the event you your self are injured, proper?” Dr. Luk says.
It’s completely regular to really feel overwhelmed in a situation the place different folks have been shot. However your actions as a bystander can provide emergency drugs the very best probability of serving to a gunshot sufferer, says Erin Corridor, MD, MPH, the medical director of the MedStar Washington Hospital Middle–Group Violence Intervention Program in Washington, DC. She’s additionally an teacher for Cease the Bleed, a nationwide public service marketing campaign and coaching program run by the American School of Surgeons’ Committee on Trauma to show folks the best way to successfully reply in emergency eventualities the place somebody is severely bleeding.
Dr. Corridor says you’ll be able to bear in mind the subsequent steps because the ABCs of responding:
- Alert the authorities
- Bleeding — discover the supply
- Compression on the wound
