Sadly, we’re all too familiar with scenes of carnage following terrorist attacks, such as the awful events that unfolded at London Bridge and Borough Market in June 2017.
We’ve all read tales of heroism, as staff tried to deal with the aftermath, and we’ve come to recognise that staff were, effectively, zero responders at the scene.
That will always be the case in such dreadful circumstances. It is a hard fact of incident control procedures, that professional first responders, the paramedics and fire service staff, won’t be allowed near the scene, until the police incident commander is satisfied that it’s safe to let them in.
That can take time, for what police are looking for, is the possibility of other hidden attackers, who have not been accounted for, or, even the presence of possibly booby-trapped, explosive devices.
That’s why event and venue, restaurant staff, are thrust into the front line, and that’s exactly why they need proper training to cope with the severe and traumatic injuries, and catastrophic bleeding, resulting from knife, gun and explosives attacks.
But, training alone is useless, unless staff are also provided with the proper bleed control kit to stem the flow of catastrophic bleeding and, so, save lives. There are desperate tales of staff running to locate conventional first aid kits, when what they need is immediate access to fully-equipped bleed control kits, which, in trained hands, can mean the difference between life and death for attack survivors.
If staff use such kits to effect, victims have a better chance of living until paramedics and trauma teams are allowed to access the scene and take charge. SALVAS is a firm believer in the need for venue customer-facing staff, including door supervisors and safety stewards to be fully trained in bleed control kit use and to have instant access to such kits for immediate use in the aftermath of an attack.
This is not a choice, as every venue and event business, great or small, has a legal duty to recognise and assess risks from terrorist and hostile threat events, and that is where we come in, with both the bags and, crucially, the expert training to deploy them in life or death emergencies.
Our #ZeroResponder Bleed Control Kit, is part our wider RunHideSurvive ™ terror & hostile attack responder programme, which was commended in the 2018 UK Counter Terror Awards.
The kit is supplied in two formats, either as a red, plastic, wall-mounted box, or as a red MOLLE-compatible, heavy-duty, nylon, zipped pouch.
In either format, the kit contains emergency bleed control bandages, windlass tourniquets, wound-packing gauze, adhesive tape, trauma shears, foil rescue blanket, indelible marker pen, rescue breath shield, nitrile gloves, information, and casualty hand-over cards.
Each one of these items has its part to play, depending in the circumstances, in saving lives. And, apart from the common sense of making sure that staff are trained and confident in their use, it’s worth remembering that, in the aftermath of any attack, staff will also be shocked, and that’s when it’s vital that training kicks in, to carry them forward thanks to familiarity with actions to be taken and the kit to be used.
And, it may not be a terrorist attack that staff need training and kit for, as knife and gun crimes, perpetrated by the criminal fraternity, are on the rise. There are numerous examples of shop, pub, and nightclub staff having to deal with the results of attacks on both other staff and customers, and, as first responders, striving to keep victims alive, perhaps for up to 30 minutes, before the paramedics arrive.
All employers need to ensure that staff have the tools to do just that and the training to give them the expertise and confidence to deal with what can be shocking wounds.
Again, that’s where SALVAS comes in, and, although we can provide our bleed control kits as stand-alone items, we do recommend that training is also provided by us, either through training sessions led by our expert instructors, or through our tried-and-tested e-learning programmes.
SALVAS has recently worked closely with community groups tackling knife crime in Birmingham. We have been working in association with Rebecca Porter of BlueKit Medical in designing bleed control kits and have provided three-and-a-half-hour bleed control training workshops in community venues and recently to night time entertainment venues in Bristol,Cardiff and Guildford.
At the heart of that training, of course, is the #ZeroResponder Bleed Control Kit, and there is no doubt that its provision, allied with the practical training provided by us, has resulted in a very much safer community, where, if the worst does happen and someone is stabbed or shot, then their chances of survival until the professional medical help arrives, are greatly enhanced.
We know, from our own experience, and from the aftermath of major and more minor incidents, that staff are only too willing to save lives and relieve suffering, as far as they can, and that is worthy of great praise.
But, unless we provide them with the tools for the job, and train them how to use them, not only will we be failing those staff members, but, crucially the catastrophically-wounded, whose chances of survival in that golden time, of the immediate aftermath, will be impaired.
SALVAS deals in very real life situations, and our trainers bring years of hands-on experience to what they deliver, just as the contents of our #ZeroResponder Bleed Control Kits are based on years of hard experience and assessed need.
Every business, large or small, has a pressing need to assess the risks faced by staff and customers, and has to ask itself if it could look itself in the eye, and, potentially, withstand the legal ramifications, if, because of lack of training and investment in appropriate kit, lives were lost.
The lives of real people can be saved, if staff are trained and equipped to go into action after an incident, preserving life, and, often in the most trying of circumstances.
It really is a matter of life and death.
Article by Mike Greville, SALVAS.