By Sarah Kuta
The Daily Camera
BOULDER, Colo. — Although small, the little black “trauma kits” carried by many University of Colorado police officers and other individuals on campus have the power to save lives in the event of a medical emergency.
For a little over a year, CU has been training students, faculty members and staff members how to use the kits, which contain tourniquets and other potentially life-saving devices.
They’re intended to be used by bystanders when emergency medical professionals aren’t immediately able to treat victims, such as during an active-shooter scenario.
So far, no one has had to use the kits on campus — and that’s a good thing.
“Frankly, I’d like to be the old guy that everybody says, ‘Remember that old guy that was here and he had us do all these kits and we never needed them?’” said Stu Pike, CU’s emergency management director. “If that happens, I will be a truly happy man. I hope we never have to use any of this stuff.”
The kits include a tourniquet, quick-clotting gauze, chest seals, scissors, bandages, tape and other first-aid tools.
Pike came to the Boulder campus last September from CU-Denver, which includes the Anschutz Medical Campus. While Pike was working at CU-Denver, former CU graduate student James Holmes was accused of going on a shooting rampage that killed 12 people and injured 70 at a movie theater in Aurora.
Though it didn’t occur on campus, the incident reiterated to Pike the need for basic emergency medical preparedness measures at colleges and universities. Pike and the CU-Denver emergency management department began dispersing trauma kits and training people there how to use them.
When he came to Boulder last year, Pike decided to allocate some of his budget toward putting together the $100 kits and for training, which takes roughly three hours.
He estimates that roughly 100 kits have been distributed, mostly to members of the CU Police Department, parking and transportation officials and some other student, faculty and staff volunteers on campus.
Though the kits could be used during an active-shooter scenario, Pike said they also will prove useful during many other emergencies — car accidents, construction accidents, domestic violence incidents and more.
“These are things that I think are important because the loss of a student, staff or faculty member to violence on this campus or any campus is a very corrosive and destructive thing,” he said. “I spend a fair amount of time and resources to mitigate that risk, even though it’s not very likely at all.”
In the unlikely event of an active-shooter situation on campus, Pike said components within the trauma kit can be instrumental in saving lives.
If a suspected shooter is still a threat, or if police can’t confirm the number of shooters, they aren’t likely to allow emergency medical personnel onto the scene to treat victims. That’s when a bystander who has been trained with a trauma kit can step in and apply a tourniquet or quick-clotting gauze to stop bleeding.
“With severe hemorrhage, you can bleed out in three minutes,” Pike said. “You can be dead in three minutes. That’s what this is all about. Maybe behind the reference librarian’s desk there’s a kit, should something happen there. If he or she wants to, they can go out and render first aid and potentially save a life.
“The premise is just to embed a medical capability in our population, not out of fear-mongering, but just out of common sense.”
CU is working with the Denver Health Paramedic Division, which leads trainings for the kits. Jim Manson, assistant chief of education and training for the division, wants to see everyone in Colorado learn basic first aid in case of a widespread emergency.
“Even pre-Aurora theater, we’ve had some concerns in the (emergency medical services) community about what we would do if we had a really big event, whether it’s an active shooter or a natural disaster like a tornado, where you have a lot of injured people and we really can’t get to them all in a timely fashion,” Manson said. “Could we teach the community itself to be more resilient?”
Denver Health has trained some 2,000 police officers and firefighters around the Denver metro area, as well as roughly 800 people on CU’s downtown and medical campus locations, Manson said.
The law enforcement community has so far been extremely receptive to learning life-saving first aid and carrying simple medical tools, Manson said. Officers seem to be encountering more heavy weaponry than in the past, Manson said, so carrying a trauma kit gives them some added confidence that they can protect themselves and the community.
“If you were to ask our opinion, this should permeate our entire community,” Manson said. “We really do think it will make a difference.”
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©2014 the Daily Camera (Boulder, Colo.)