How to Treat a Bleeding Nose

Chip Meyers: Hi! I am Chip Meyers; I am paramedic with the City of Alexandria Fire Department in Alexandria, Virginia. Now, we are going to talk about some basic first aid skills and look at what to do for a nose bleed, that's uncontrolled bleeding. Right now, we have Josh over here, whose nose is bleeding and Kelsey (ph) comes in to help stop it. She is going to put direct pressure just to the tip of the nose, right here at the fleshy part below the cartilage. She's going to hold direct pressure there for about ten minutes. It takes about that long in order to get bleeding to actually stop. That should help. If you can hold the nose, you can have the person, the individual themselves help hold the nose as long as they hold it for ten minutes continuously. If you have somebody with a nose bleed, you want to just hold the nares, pinch them firmly with direct pressure for at least ten minutes. The other thing is have them lean forward. You want to prevent the blood from going down the back of their throat. The blood goes down the back of the throat, it gets into the stomach, and it will upset the stomach, cause them to throw up. That's also why you don't want to lay the person down if they have a nose bleed. Coming up next, we are going to talk about what to do for person who is in shock.