Lifeguards must carry tourniquets that are marine grade. Lifeguards are stationed on beaches, and work in the ocean, which means there are unique surf rescue challenges that must be accounted for in a tourniquets design in order to ensure that it can be applied effectively and rapidly. Lifeguard organizations that procure and carry traditional generic tourniquets may find themselves at a huge disadvantage in the water, and carrying a huge risk of liability due to inadequate tourniquet selection.
Since a lifeguard’s life revolves around their performance in the water, a lifeguard’s gear, especially a tourniquet should too. Traditional tourniquets with a windlass application are slower, less effective, lower quality, are not made to withstand exposure, and thus void their warranties upon removal from packaging. This means the use of a combat windlass tourniquet in the marine environment can hurt not help a lifeguard, and it also means that a lifeguard using this tourniquet type will be adding to the oceans plastic pollution. #plasticfreewave
A few tourniquets market themselves as marine grade, however, upon actual inspection, and testing you will find there is only one tourniquet manufacturer actually making tourniquets with 100% marine-grade materials, and with engineering to optimize in-water tourniquet application. These tourniquets which are ideal for lifeguards to practice surf life saving are made by OMNA Inc. OMNA tourniquets are developed by a number of Marines, Surfers, and Divers, thus giving them a unique and required perspective in what actually works best for lifeguards using a tourniquet in surf life saving.
As a lifeguard, if you are using a tourniquet there has likely been a wipeout or collision in the surf zone, a person has been cut with an outboard motor, or possibly a shark investigated a human thinking it was a fish or seal. Any one of these scenarios means you and the victim are at a minimum wet, likely treading water, or swimming. Your hands, limbs, and bodies are slippery, and your environment is unstable. Now add blood, injury, hysterical victim, and stress to the mix, which further increase the slippery and danger factors. If you make it to shore, then there is the sand factor, which we won’t get into here at this time.
If you the lifeguard weren’t able to get a tourniquet on the victim immediately upon reaching them in the water, none of that matters, because it’s necessary for you to get that tourniquet applied before you got anywhere near shore. If you were rescuing a surfer that was 100 yards offshore in the line-up you’ve got to get to the surfer, initiate rescue, and get them back to shore. The time for that entire process can easily exceed the time you have to stop a bleed, to prevent death from bleeding out. Swimming 100 yards in a pool takes easily 2 minutes, that same swim in the ocean can take 3-4 minutes, and you as a lifeguard have to swim that to the victim and back with the victim, which can further increase that time. That’s too long to let a victim continue to bleed to ensure safety, and survival. You might get them out of the water alive, but did they lose more than 20% of their blood supply? If they did they’ve developed hypovolemic shock, and their organs are failing, and that’s what actually kills people.
#surfing #lifeguard #tourniquet #surflifesaving #surfer #surfrescue #nationalseashore
