Article 2 - Medical Preparedness, Trauma, and Stop the Bleed

Minutes matter. A simple skill set and basic gear can turn a crisis into a survivable incident.

Medical readiness is a leadership skill. You may be first on scene for a teammate, a family member, your security team, a stranger, or entirely on your own. Competent trauma care is possible when you train for it, and you stage the right tools where you live, drive, and work.

We Are Red Teaming: Assumptions that someone else will know how to stabilize the injured person and that emergency services will arrive in time to prevent loss of life.

Even in urban areas where emergency responders may arrive within six to eight minutes, uncontrolled arterial bleeding from vehicle crashes, falls, and knife or gunshot wounds can be fatal in two to five minutes, making the immediate trauma skills taught in Stop the Bleed training critical before help arrives.

Mitigation Actions:
·      First minutes matter; training and staged gear turn chaos into controlled action.
·      Stop the Bleed. Complete trauma response training and practice tourniquet use.
·      Trauma kits. Stage kits at home, in vehicles, offices, and go bags.
·      Medical records. Keep copies of prescriptions and essential details for family and pets.
·      Family familiarity. Teach others where kits are stored and how to use them.

Stop the Bleed training mitigates the leading preventable cause of trauma death in the United States: uncontrolled hemorrhage, regardless of whether the injury is accidental, intentional, or disaster related.

Prepared leaders save time and save lives. If a bleeding injury happened in front of you today, are you ready to act in the first minute?