What is happening?

What to do

1. Get emergency help and give your location. Alone, call on speakerphone while pressing.
2. Eye or skull dent: no pressure. Organs protruding from abdomen: no pressure or pushing back. Cover loosely with clean damp gauze. Emergency help now. Do not pack these wounds.
3. Open chest wound: emergency help, leave exposed to air. No plastic or sealing dressing. Existing covering with worse breathing: loosen/remove that covering. Leave embedded objects.
4. If able, press your wound with clean cloth. For an embedded object, press either side. Ask someone to keep pressure if you cannot.
5. Stay still if the place is safe. Ask someone to stay and maintain pressure until someone takes over.
6. Tell your helper if dizzy, cold or struggling to breathe.
7. Child/baby or short stump: pressure and emergency help now. Tourniquet only suitable size and trained/guided use. No room clear of joint/wound: follow dispatcher. Do not improvise fit or site.
8. Life-threatening arm/leg bleeding despite pressure: use a commercial tourniquet if trained or dispatcher-guided. Place 5–7 cm above the wound, never over a joint. Tighten until bleeding stops, record time and do not loosen.
9. Tourniquet in place, still bleeding: report now. If trained, check fit/position. Available second goes above first per instructions. Never loosen first. Keep visible and record times.
10. No suitable tourniquet or unable to use it: continue firm pressure and request help now. Alone, ask someone to press for you. Do not leave for equipment or loosen for pain/long waiting.