{"id":2050,"date":"2017-07-21T14:27:35","date_gmt":"2017-07-21T14:27:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.abetteremergency.com\/blog\/?p=2050"},"modified":"2017-07-26T21:41:39","modified_gmt":"2017-07-26T21:41:39","slug":"shark-week","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/abetteremergency.com\/blog\/2017\/07\/shark-week\/","title":{"rendered":"Shark Week"},"content":{"rendered":"

I like many of my readers enjoy when television gives us a whole week of nothing but sensationalized and awesome footage of sharks doing what sharks do. \u00a0I’m waiting for the week dedicated to bees, wasps and snakes since they are responsible for far more deaths each year in the U.S. than sharks. \u00a0I know, that is unlikely to happen.\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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What I have found interesting in watching the footage of shark attacks (few as they might be) is the typical cause of death, exsanguination. \u00a0Friends and bystanders risk their lives to bring the attack victim to shore but every minute more blood is being lost which can’t be replaced easily. \u00a0Any decent medic will tell you it’s much better to keep the blood in the body to circulate oxygen than plan on raising pressure with fluids which don’t carry oxygen. \u00a0Delayed death by organ failure due to poor field perfusion can’t really be called a win.<\/p>\n

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I can’t advise people to tread water while putting on an improvised tourniquet but it may yield a better outcome than dragging a bled out corpse to the beach. \u00a0I know the shark could come back to attack again but that seems to be the exception in shark attacks not the rule. \u00a0Besides, not stopping the bleeding and allowing a limb to continue to bleed just leaves a scent trail for the shark to follow doesn’t it?<\/p>\n

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Traumatic injuries severe enough to cause loss of life by bleeding out was the most common cause of death in military combat. \u00a0Data from recent and continuing conflicts have reinforced the role of early application of tourniquets and hemorrhage control when it comes to life saving care and some military units have fantastic survival rates. \u00a0Non-combat causes of exsanguination include gunshot or stab wounds; motor vehicle crashes; suicide by severing arteries, typically those in the wrists; and partial or total limb amputation due to machinery or motorized cutting devices.<\/p>\n

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Visitors to my site know that I am a firm believer in giving the lay public more information to better position them to take proper action to save lives. \u00a0Some of my strategies may be a bit controversial such as my Active Shooter course<\/a>\u00a0but if I suffer an injury which is causing me to bleed out, I will gladly take the first trained person who shows up over waiting on the local emergency service providers. Most recently a product has come along that may revolutionize bystander support, the Mobilize Rescue System<\/a>. I’ll be talking more about this in a future post but it is the first-aid kit of the future as far as I am concerned.<\/p>\n

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Back to the connection to shark week. \u00a0In South Africa they have developed what is called a Shark Attack Pack<\/a> which is designed to give the life guards everything they need to stop bleeding and infuse solutions. \u00a0I am not sold on the need for fluids in most cases and would be satisfied if first responders along our coastal waters had access to disposable arterial clamps, tourniquets and large trauma dressings. \u00a0The nice thing about this small list of supplies is that it will work for any cause of severe bleeding, not just a shark attack.<\/p>\n

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I’m pretty sure that in about two hours I can teach a member of the public what they need to know in order to use these supplies to stop lethal hemorrhaging. \u00a0 I would also include a module on improvised replacements for each item which could probably be rapidly scrounged up. \u00a0 The point is, we can build off of the public’s interest in sharks at this moment in time to educate them on how to manage bleeding regardless of cause. \u00a0Taking a class, purchasing a tourniquet or placing a Mobilize kit <\/a>at each life guard tower along beaches anywhere in the world where sharks and human run into each other could save a life down the road.<\/p>\n

I’m interested to hear what you think?<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I like many of my readers enjoy when television gives us a whole week of nothing but sensationalized and awesome footage of sharks doing what sharks do. \u00a0I’m waiting for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3728,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,1],"tags":[7,11,28,29,34,36,38,49,56,127,80,81,82,84],"class_list":["post-2050","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-uncategorized","tag-7","tag-best-practices","tag-disaster-response","tag-disasters","tag-elected-officials","tag-emergency-management","tag-ems","tag-hospitals","tag-incident-response","tag-mobilize-rescue-systems","tag-pre-hospital-care","tag-preparedness","tag-protection","tag-public-safety"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abetteremergency.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2050","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abetteremergency.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abetteremergency.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abetteremergency.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abetteremergency.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2050"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/abetteremergency.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2050\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4493,"href":"https:\/\/abetteremergency.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2050\/revisions\/4493"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abetteremergency.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3728"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abetteremergency.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abetteremergency.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abetteremergency.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}