One of your coworkers was hit in the leg with a wide load on a forklift. As a responding first aid provider, you carefully cut her pant leg open to expose the injury site and find the lower leg is laying at an unnatural angle and the tissue color of the leg and foot below the injury is a grayish blue. What should you do?

Answer: use tourniquet to put pressure to control the the bleeding.

Explanation:

When direct pressure is unable to control bleeding on a limb, use a tourniquet.

Tourniquets utilize a simple binding method around a limb to stop blood flow.

Commercially made tourni-

quets are easier to

use than improvised ones because they are already made. It is

placed around a limb a few

inches above the open injury.

The solid handle, connected to

the band, is twisted to make it the band tighten evenly around the

limb until bleeding stops. To maintain constriction the

handle is secured in place. Tourniquet can be

Improvised, using the same concept and can be created with nearby

materials such as triangular bandages and something solid to twist with.

A tourniquet can be considered as a primary step to control severe limb

bleeding when it is clear direct pressure cannot be used, such as in a mass

casualty event.