How to Apply Direct Pressure to Bleeding

How to Apply Direct Pressure to Bleeding
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 go over direct pressure. It's your first defense against any type of bleed that you need to control. First thing you want to do is you want to take a gloved hand and immediately cover the wound. When you are doing this you are pressing very firmly in hopes of stopping the blood flow. What you are doing by putting the gloved hand on it this is just a temporary solution until another person can come and actually bring you something to help start absorb some of the blood. It normally takes anywhere from six to eight minutes for the blood to start to form a clot. This time obviously varies to less time if the cut is very small and it can be a lot longer if the cut is severe. Once you have the direct pressure what you want to do is some how have someone to hand you some sort of this is called a dressing. Different than a bandage a dressing covers a wound a bandage will hold in place. You are now holding down direct pressure. If this doesn't work what you want to do is elevate the extremity. Once you have it elevated above the heart this is going to slow down blood flow strictly by gravity. If that doesn't work while still maintaining elevation and direct pressure you then need to have someone come up and do a pressure point to cut off the arteries blood flow to the limb or you can tie a dressing around this to hold pressure while you do the artery. These also come in things such as sterile dressings. What this is it's the exact same thing but it comes in a sterile dressing where this is completely sterile. This can go over a fracture site where the bone needs to be covered and protected. And they come in various sizes. This is a four by four which works for most small cuts and they come anywhere up to a size of an eight by ten and even large trauma sheets which are about the size of a normal sheet for a twin size bed.