Thanks Rob, the use of the tourniquet was set up perfectly, I was really trying to get people to focus on it.
Feet are funny things,everybody seems to want to stick sharp objects into them or crush them. Farms seem particularly hostile to them. I've seen injuries to them that included large holes and nearly no blood loss or nerve damage. Sometimes small holes had the opposite happen.
Back in the day( we won't discuss how long ago) tourniqueting was SOP, every old timer immediately defaulted to doing it. We lost limbs we shouldn't have in the most horrifying and painful manner. Blood loss leading to gangrene leading to amputation. The reason I mentioned it is this.
Effective training sticks in your head, even if it's wrong. As nurses we constantly had to abandon what we were taught and learn better methods. We didn't do it easily or half the time willingly and we were Pro's. Think about all the changes in how we have done CPR over the years. When we are in a critical situation the old ways give us comfort in the middle of chaos. CPR recertification was periodically required just because of this.
If you have the opportunity attend a red cross CPR/first aid class, even if you have before. Here is the link
http://www.redcross.org/portal/site/...0089f0870aRCRD
As I was looking this up I found out they now have an iphone/android app! I'm downloading it now, I'll report in on it's effectiveness. Maybe this old dog has one new trick left
