My name is Alv Rios and I am a paramedic with Lansing Mercy Ambulance on behalf of Expert
Village. In this clip we are going to over tourniquet use to help control blood loss.
Tourniquets should be used only as a last resort for blood loss control. A tourniquet
should be applied once you've came to a conclusion that you are not able to control the blood
loss with direct pressure, elevation and pressure point combined. Once you realize that it's
not controlling the blood loss what you are saying to yourself is I'm now going to put
a tourniquet on. This tourniquet is going to cut off complete blood flow to the extremity.
Here again by lacking the extremity from getting the blood flow it needs it's going to actually
start to die and tissue narcosis will begin. What that means is by putting on the tourniquet
you are saving the person's life from the blood loss but you are sacrificing that limb
and it shouldn't have to be amputated if put on correctly. This is an example of a commercial
product you can buy. Anything can be used similar to this such as a piece of clothing
or belt. Once you have opened this from the package you will have the triangular bandage.
What this is very similar to is a bandanna. I'm not going to open it all of the way up
because for the sake of this I want it to look just like this. What you want to have
is approximately two inches wide of material. You always want to go approximately two inches
above the injury site also. For this sake of this example we are going to say that I
am loosing blood from just above my knee here and it's an arterial bleed. Which means it
is bright red squirting blood. I've been unable to control it with direct pressure and elevation
of my leg and by pushing on my femoral artery right here I was still not able to control
the blood loss. I then move into my tourniquet. It's important to remember the two by two
rule. This is my injury site. You want to go two inches above the injury site and you
want to have the material to use your tourniquet, approximately two inches wide. So what you
want to do is put it right over above the injury site, you then want to make sure this
is extremely tight and come up to the top and make a small knot and try to get that
as tight as you can. You are not able to actually pull this tight enough to completely elude
the blood flow. It is very important that this is extremely tight because if you only
put it on partially what you are going to do is squeeze the blood vessels which is still
going to have blood flow and going to cause the bleeding but it is actually going to increase
blood flow because the body is going to think that it is having a lack of the blood. So
it is going to try to increase the blood flow to that injury site. So it's very important
that if you decide to put on a tourniquet you are going to completely elude all blood
flow to the extremity distal that spot. Next you want to use something; I am going to use
a pencil for this. You can use a pen. Anything long a little bit hard, you can eve use a
stick. Just set it right over the injury site. What you are then going to do is just wrap
the ends around like this and give it another tie here. This is just tying into place. What
you are now joint to do is start to actually spin it around. As you spin it, it is going
to tighten here. I am going to stop it here for the sake of I don't want to cut the blood
flow off completely to my leg. But that will be sufficient enough. Once you have it as
tight as you think you can go or to the breaking point of whatever object you used what you
then want to do is secure it into place. If I let this go it will start to spin it's self
around again and release. So what I want to do is lock it in place. I do this by taking
my two ends that I have left and wrapping it around and then tying its self back together
again. Keep in mind it's going to release just a little bit but it should stay in place.