How to Treat a Bleeding Arm Wound

Chip Meyers: Hi! I am Chip Meyers; I am paramedic in the City of Alexandria Fire Department in Alexandria, Virginia. Today, we are going to talk about some basic first aid skills that may help you save somebody's life.

Over here, we have Josh, whose arm is bleeding. Kelsey (ph) is coming to control that bleeding with direct pressure. She takes some clean gauge, anything that's clean, it will work and she applies direct pressure with her fingertips, the heel of palm or hand. We are going to apply direct pressure to the blood vessels right at the side of the injury. We want to apply enough pressure to control the bleeding and we want to make sure we put that pressure right on the injured area. After she has applied direct pressure, that should be enough to control the bleeding; she can use some roller gauge to help hold that bandage in place. Now, if hemorrhage is left unchecked, the person will die from it. So that's why it's important to stop the hemorrhage as soon as possible. Ideally, have somebody call 911 and returned to you when they have done, incase the dispatch has any further information that you could use. Now, if this isn't going to enough to stop the bleeding or if the bleeding continues, we might also elevate the arm above the level of the heart. If this were the leg, then you would have the person lie down and elevate the leg.

If the bleeding still continues, then we would apply pressure to a pressure point. Pressure points are located in the arm and in the leg. Here she is using the one in the upper arm; probably you will feel a pulse rating. What you do is you apply firm pressure to control the bleeding beyond the injury. Now, if that doesn't work and only as a last resort, would you apply a tourniquet. Most tourniquets are improperly applied. First thing you want to do is you want to make sure that whatever you are using for tourniquet is wide and you are going to wrap it around the arm several times and then you're going to tie it off. You can use a belt, you could use this triangular bandage, for that's a bandana, whatever you have that's handy and hopefully, it's not too stretchy. So you tie that off, I am using a square knot and then you are going to slide either a dell-rod, a stick, something that's strong, something that's firm and you are going to start to twist and you want to twist it until you stop the bleeding beyond the injury side. So when the bleeding stops, we know we probably got enough pressure. Keep it elevated and you can tie the dell-rod off. Those are the steps that you could use to control bleeding in the arm. Next, we are going to talk about uncontrolled bleeding of the nose.