Tourniquet Training Effectiveness Study

Trauma is the leading cause of death for individuals ages 1-45 years old, within this cohort, and uncontrolled hemorrhage is the leading cause of preventable death.1,2 Tourniquets have been shown to be effective in dramatically decreasing death from uncontrolled hemorrhage on the battlefield and there is level 4 evidence that EMS application of tourniquets in the civilian sector is effective though not to the same degree as in the military.3,4 Multiple national groups have advocated that to further decrease preventable deaths from hemorrhage, laypersons should apply tourniquets before the arrival of professional first responders. To this aim, the "Stop the Bleed" campaign has trained over 100,000 individuals in the US in hemorrhage control techniques and tourniquet use with the Bleeding Control Basic (B-Con) course.5 The "Stop the Bleed" campaign informs course participants all commercial tourniquets are equivalent, and improvised tourniquets should be applied if a commercial tourniquet is not available.6 The investigators are evaluating the ability of the B-Con course participants to apply three different types of commercial tourniquets, the Rapid Application tourniquet (RAT), the Stretch-Wrap-And-Tuck tourniquet (SWAT-T), and the Sof Tourniquet (Sof-T) as well as participants ability to fashion an improvised tourniquet. The investigators hypothesize B-Con in its current form does not enable course participants to apply other commercial tourniquets beyond the specific one taught, the CAT tourniquet, and does not teach how to apply an improvised tourniquet.