How to Apply a Pressure Bandage

Video transcription

In this clip we are going to go over making a pressure bandage for an injury such as a laceration or a deep cut. This is my partner Jacob Barbor. He also works with me as a paramedic for Lansing Mercy Ambulance. What we want to do in this situation is control the bleeding. We are going to start by taking a bandage or a dressing and we are going to take our dressing and the first thing we are going to do if this is our injury site is hold direct pressure and elevate the extremity. What we also want to do is keep the direct pressure. It is more practical for me to tie something here to hold the pressure for me rather that me use my resources to hold my hand here the whole time. So what I want to do is use something that is clean. This is a bandage. What we are going to do is put this on there to work as holding the pressure for me. It's important that when you are bandaging because you are going to be making this tight you want to make sure that you work distal to proximal. Distal means the furthest from you. Proximal means the closest. So you want to start at the wrist and as you work your way closer in. The reason for this is because since you are going to be making this tight you don't want to push blood in the hand and trap it there. You would rather go the other way around if possible. This is an adequate dressing right here and what I can do now is tuck it in by cutting this. What I am going to show you also are some different ways that you can help make this a little bit tighter cause usually the more pressure you have the better chance you are going to stop the blood flow. You can do something which what we do is you pull it out and you are just going to rotate the cloth. What this does is reinforce this. It makes it a little bit stronger. You can pull harder. By doing that crossing motion it makes it stronger and less flexible than this normal cloth. Again when you run out of cloth you can just cut this and what you are going to do is just tuck it underneath such as this eliminating this top part. If for some reason this ever becomes blood soaked and the blood is coming through it to the point where it's no longer controlling the bleeding you want to make sure that you never take off the dressing but rather just put new bandages over this one. But you never want to take off the original one once you have it on.