That is a very good video of TK application to learn from.
1) It was the personal TK from the officer. A lot of them wear them around their ankle.
2) one of the "mistakes" the officer made was to "unthread" the TK from the buckle. This is a real pain in the ass. We dont teach doing that ever, exactly for this reason. Did you see how much time was lost trying to "thread" the buckle under duress? Its almost impossible, If you look at the TK, the buckle has two holes. The two holes are used to thread the strap through so it will not slip when you pull it tight, or loosen post-application. Most people during an event like that will only use one hole in the buckle, which is incorrect. You can get away with it on an arm , but a leg, with the amount of muscle mass, will/could pull the velcro loose and lose the desired affect.
3) to accomplish application while the buckle it still threaded, you usually slip it over the limb affected from the end, and slide up. This can be complicated by baggy clothing or pants of any sort. Ideally, you would strip/cut away as much clothing as you could …again, that is a case by case/situational thing. The officers carry a TK four their use, and don't usually have trauma shears , and clearly gloves were an afterthought.
4) Several of you remarked about how much blood there was. That guy would have been unconscious in another minute, and bled out in two. It is a very clear representation of how fast you can bleed out. Granted he had several critical GSW's, but that arterial leg wound was what was killing him the fastest. He would have been dead, or would die from being so hypertensive and loosing that much of his own blood by the time EMS got there. A common misconception is that we will just transfuse him u[on getting to the hospital and he will be fine. Thats not really the case. Even getting blood products on board, and of the correct typing , isn't a guarantee. I gave a gentleman 7 pts of blood from an accident scene, and he still passed, even though we kept his pressure up. You always want to save as much of their own blood as possible.
5) You also see how it took two officers to "get it right". I think this is from several issues. One, they were under duress. A lot of it. They had the forethought of the TK, but them, under that much stress, fine motor skills/clear thinking go out the window. The second thing is training. Its great that we carry first aid equipment with us, but the amount of training you get plays a big part on the efficacy of the equipment. The odds of you actually deploying a TK in the field is extremely low. Therefore the amount of time spent training is very low. In EMS we see this as being a high acuity skill , with little to no ability to actually practice it….which makes it an extremely high risk skill to expect good results from. Much like placing an intubation (breathing) tube.
6) And don't forget you can use more than one TK if you aren't getting desired results.
I think it was great they did that. It did show they did what they had to do, then re-geared in their heads once the threat was over to begin tx.
That man might die, but he wont die from the leg wound bleeding out anymore. Or, from lack of trying to help him. They went above and beyond.
Now where is the hand sanitizer?
