Emergency training for schoolchildren proposed in new legislation
Schoolchildren could be taught how to treat severe bleeding following stabbings or car crashes if a proposed new law successfully passes through Parliament, reports BritPanorama.
Under the legislation, pupils would learn to recognise “life-threatening bleeding” and administer emergency treatment, alongside effectively responding during a crisis. The Emergency and Life-Saving Skills (Schools) Bill is scheduled for debate in Parliament on Friday but will need government support to pass.
The Bill, introduced by Conservative MP Neil Shastri-Hurst (Solihull West and Shirley), aims to expand upon the life-saving skills currently taught in schools, which already include CPR. Shastri-Hurst, a former British Army major and honorary consultant trauma co-ordinator at Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, emphasized the importance of this training.
“It’s about stop the bleed training,” he said. “If we can train a critical mass in terms of how to recognise catastrophic bleeding and how to deal with it, that is going to save a huge number of lives, because the average time for an ambulance to arrive is about eight-and-a-half minutes. But you can bleed out in four.”
He added, “I would see people coming into a major trauma centre at the QE in Birmingham in the most acute extremis, and if some of those individuals had intervention at the scene prior to an ambulance arriving, it is entirely foreseeable that some of those individuals who didn’t survive may have survived.”
The Conservative MP noted that the charity Citizen Aid has already trained 1,000 children in a school in a single day with the help of a few volunteers. Founded by consultant trauma surgeon Sir Keith Porter and Major General Tim Hodgetts, the former surgeon general for the armed forces, Citizen Aid focuses on equipping children with crucial life-saving skills.
Shastri-Hurst indicated these skills could be applied in various situations, from car crashes to sporting injuries or terror attacks. He advised that in the immediate aftermath of serious bleeding, the first action should be to apply pressure to stem the flow.
If direct pressure fails, he suggested improvising a tourniquet using available items such as a belt or a tie and twisting it to create enough tension to stop blood flow. “It’s giving people the confidence not just to know what to do, but have the confidence to put that into action,” he said.
“It’s a low-tech set of training; you can do most of it with a drainpipe, a bit of foam, and a tie or a bandage or a handkerchief. You can teach the basic training on stop the bleed in about 10-15 minutes. They then go and explain it to their families, which builds a critical mass of individuals who know how to do it.”
Ultimately, he concluded, “It’s about building up our national resilience, and part of that resilience is having a society that knows how to respond in an emergency.”
