On the second annual National Stop the Bleed Day members from the Alameda Health System (AHS) trauma team partnered with AHS HealthPATH and Alameda County EMS Corps to teach almost 100 students at Castlemont High School in Oakland how to Stop the Bleed.

Taranay a junior at Castlemont who wants to be a registered nurse found the training helpful.

“Each time I hear of a school shooting it is very scary and I always wonder how many people died. Before this training I didn’t think there would be anything I could do in that type of a situation, but now I feel I can.”

In the aftermath the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, the Joint Committee to Create a National Policy to Enhance Survivability from Intentional Mass Casualty and Active Shooter Events was formed and the Stop the Bleed training was created as a result of their research.

Now Stop the Bleed is a national awareness campaign and call-to-action. Stop the Bleed is intended to cultivate grassroots efforts that encourage bystanders to become trained, equipped, and empowered to help in a bleeding emergency before professional help arrives.

“Out of all the programs I facilitate in regards to trauma prevention I feel like this one touches everyone. People should have the knowledge on bleeding control. We are in California so there is always the possibility of an earthquake and unfortunately like natural disasters we cannot predict the time or place of the next mass shooting,” said Stefania Kaplanes, trauma prevention program manager for AHS.

The American College of Surgeons recommend that all level 1 trauma centers offer Stop the Bleed classes to their surrounding community. As a way to meet this goal, AHS trauma services started a year-long campaign to teach Stop the Bleed to all high schools in the Oakland Unified School District (OUSD). The first class was held at Oakland High School on February 14th, the anniversary of the Parkland High School shooting in Florida. A train-the-trainer class was provided to the OUSD Health Services school nurses in April. There are plans to offer additional training to other OUSD schools for the 2019/2020 school year.

Devvyn Taylor, the public health science teacher at Castlemont decided to host this training after he learned about it from an OUSD nurse.

“I feel this training is important for our students to have. Unfortunately there are shootings in Oakland and I want my students to be ready and able to assist if need be. This will help them better serve their community.”

Taylor has now incorporated stop the bleed training into his curriculum and all four of his classes were trained.