By Paul Wilcoxen
The Southern Illinoisan, Ill.
VIENNA,Ill. — The Regional Hospital Coordinating Center for Region V and Southern Illinois Healthcare donated 85 Stop the Bleed kits to the Vienna School District on Monday morning, accompanied by hands-on training for students and staff.
Vienna Police Officer and School Resource Officer David Stewart said the idea came after reviewing the district’s emergency plans and noticing they focused on classrooms rather than the many students who ride buses each day.
Because he trains officers and school staff in emergency response, he felt the transportation side needed the same attention.
“We always plan for what’s inside the building in the event of an active intruder or things like that,” Stewart said. “I hadn’t really thought outside the box a little bit, and looked at our transportation side, our school buses.”
After checking the buses, he found they had no medical kits. He contacted Southern Illinois Healthcare to see if the district could be supplied with Stop the Bleed kits.
“It was just perfect timing,” he said. “He was able to get here and do that very quickly. So very grateful for that.”
Arien Herrmann, SIH’s system manager for regional healthcare resiliency, said Stewart’s request was the first time anyone had asked for kits specifically for school buses.
“We’ve distributed hundreds of these kits to various schools and community buildings across southern Illinois. I myself never thought to put them on school buses. So this is kind of exciting,” Herrmann said.
He said SIH designed and built the kits using grant funding from the Illinois Department of Public Health, which allowed the organization to stretch its resources and distribute more of them across its 23-county region.
“We will keep distributing them until we run out of kits,” he said. “I would definitely welcome a few phone calls.”
Herrmann compared Stop the Bleed training to CPR because of its potential to save lives. “We want to see these stop the bleed kits become as readily available as AEDs are today,” he said.
Vienna High School nurse Sherie Smith said the hands-on work helped students overcome the hesitation many people feel when confronted with blood or traumatic injuries.
“As they get the training, they get their hands on the equipment. They get to do that with the mannequins,” Smith said. “It just provides them a stronger sense to say that they can do this, and they would actually be able to save a life.”
Smith said rural response times make this training essential. A bleeding victim, she said, may not survive the several minutes it can take for an ambulance to reach the school.
“The ambulance is not going to be the one that saves them,” she said. “We need the students. We need the staff to know how to do that.”
She said SIH’s support strengthens the school’s health programs by providing equipment, training and opportunities for students to explore healthcare careers.
“They provide us with the kits, which is absolutely huge,” she said. “They are really just building these students into a career that may not always be in the health care, but they will be able to help someone no matter where they’re at.”
Students said the hands-on practice made the training feel real and showed them how to use the equipment. Learning to apply a tourniquet and pack a wound also gave many of them more confidence to step in during an emergency.
Sophomore Leah Philpott said the training taught her both skills, while junior Kallie Rankin said she left feeling more capable of performing them in real situations.
Herrmann said that confidence is the program’s goal.
“Hopefully no one ever has to do it,” he said. “But if they do, they’re going to be better prepared.”
© 2025 The Southern Illinoisan, Ill..
Visit www.thesouthern.com.
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
