The American College of Surgeons is offering several Stop the Bleed®: Bleeding Control Basic and Instructor Courses during Clinical Congress 2018. Four courses will be held Tuesday and two more on Wednesday in the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center, 206AB. All of the courses were filled with pre-registrants, but a handful of no-shows on Monday allowed several walk-up registrants to attend and the same could happen Tuesday and Wednesday.

The courses are designed to teach participants what to do as an immediate responder in a bleeding emergency and how to train others in bleeding control techniques. During Monday’s first course, Margaret Moore, MD, FACS, adjunct assistant professor, trauma and critical care surgery, LSU Health, New Orleans, LA, discussed the ABCs of stopping bleeding (Alert, find the Bleeding injury, and Compress).

“I recognize that everyone in the room knows how to put a tourniquet on and knows how to pack a wound, so today’s course is really more about teaching you the background of why we’re trying to get the word out on Stop the Bleed, and then how to teach the course to the layperson,” she said.

Following Dr. Moore’s 20-minute didactic presentation, attendees divided into small groups for hands-on skills demonstrations for using a tourniquet, packing a wound, and applying pressure.

Lung W. Lau, MD, resident, department of surgery, Case Western Reserve School of Medicine, Cleveland, OH, attended the course with the goal of becoming an instructor and helping laypeople learn to stop bleeding when they find themselves in a situation where they can help.

“It’s important for those people to be able to help and assess before the EMTs (emergency medical technicians) and the doctors get there,” he said. “If there’s any opportunity for me to teach, even if it’s just friends who are not in the medical community, then that’s just an extra person who can help and spread the word.”