New research from St John Ambulance shows that fewer than four in 10 (38%) people said they would know how to treat a serious bleed from an injury or wound.
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00:00Hi, I'm health reporter Sarah McCann. New research from St John's Ambulance has discovered
00:05that 6 in 10 people wouldn't know what first aid to give if they found someone bleeding
00:10out after being stabbed. The research found that more than a quarter had never learned
00:14first aid and that nearly half would feel panicked if they came across a health emergency.
00:20Street doctor volunteer Lauren McCormick has shared a step-by-step guide on how to save
00:25the life of someone who has been stabbed.
00:28I teach by AS Alert. So this is ambulance safety, apply pressure, lie down, elevate
00:34legs, reassure and temperature. So the most important thing you can do if you find someone
00:39who's bleeding is call an ambulance because fundamentally the hospital staff and everything
00:43that they can do to intervene is what's going to save a person's life. So we teach people
00:47what to do when you ring an ambulance. So there are two fundamental things you need
00:50to do. You need to say what's happened, so either someone's been stabbed or someone's
00:54bleeding, and where you are, so give your location. For safety, you want to make sure
00:59that you're not endangering yourself by going to help this person. So for example, if they're
01:03in the middle of a busy road or there's electrical wires around, you need to make sure that you're
01:07not going to put yourself at risk by going and then will end up with two casualties instead
01:11of one. So we then say that you need to apply pressure. So to do this, if say they've been
01:18impaled by something, you go around the wound. You can see that. And one thing we always
01:23talk about is whether or not if there's still an object in, whether we should take it out.
01:28So we teach this using the bottle demonstration, which I have here. Hopefully this will work.
01:35So unfortunately, the blood is blue today, as I'm working from home. But essentially,
01:40if you've got something in someone's body, this is essentially acting as a plug. So if
01:46I try and get the water out with it stuck in, there's a little trickle, but it is essentially
01:51keeping the water in. If I then take the spoon out, blood is pouring really fast out. So
01:57this is essentially keeping the blood in the body and helping to save the person's life,
02:02which does seem counterintuitive since it's a foreign object, but it's basically acting
02:07as a plug. Another important thing to say is if the object has been taken out, you then
02:13should never put it back in because the chances of you putting it back in at the same angle
02:17that it first went in is so, so slim that you're probably going to end up damaging more
02:21structures on the way back in. So it's best to be left out. Get whatever you can, a scarf,
02:26anything to hold and apply pressure. And the next thing we say is to lie someone down.
02:31So if I use the bottle again, your legs have so much blood in them. Each leg has two pints
02:36of blood in it. So if you lie someone down, you're essentially meaning that the body doesn't
02:41have to work against gravity to get the blood over to the head and to the chest where the
02:45most vital organs are. You should then elevate the legs. So when we elevate the legs, this
02:50essentially does the same thing in that the blood pours down and doesn't have to fight
02:54against gravity in order to get to the head and the chest. You should reassure the person
02:59because firstly, this is a really, really stressful situation for them to be in. But
03:03also by reassuring them, you might be able to bring their heart rate down a bit. So that
03:07means that they're going to stop losing blood as quickly as they are originally. And temperature
03:13is a really important one. So essentially, the blood acts as like your thermoregulatory
03:18system. If we imagine the body is a radiator, the blood is like the radiator fluid within
03:24it. So it's taking warmth all around the body. So if you're losing blood, you're losing warmth.
03:29And if someone's outside, we say it's really important to put something onto the body because
03:34the concrete floor is going to soak up the heat really, really quickly. So yeah, as alert,
03:40ambulance, safety, apply pressure, lie down, elevate legs, reassure, and temperature.