Maui Health Active Attacker & Stop the Bleed Training Recap

On June 27, 2023, we attended Maui Health’s Active Attacker/Stop the Bleed Training at the Maui Memorial Medical Center. Directed by Cameron Rogers, the Trauma Injury Prevention & Outreach Coordinator, MHLA was invited to learn the “Run, Hide, Fight” methods to survive potential attacks and methods of blood loss prevention, especially that of bullet or stab wounds. While this training might seem unrelated to the visitor industry, many threats, mass and targeted attacks do take place in tourist populated locations, hotels, shopping areas and county buildings, and Hawaii is not immune to such attempts. Therefore, Maui Health asked Sergeant Jan Pontanilla from the Maui Police Department to teach industry leaders the cues leading up to an attack, the thought process of attackers, and the action to take if attacked in order to prevent deaths and fatal injuries as much as possible.

During the training, Sergeant Pontanilla explained how fear and stress take over in traumatic situations which is why being mentally prepared for an attack, shooting or other, and knowing how to deal with such a wound is essential for modern day survival. Along with her personal experiences from being on the job, she shared statistics and surveillance of real-life events that attest to the importance of this training. Public training websites that Sergeant Pontanilla shared, can be found at FBI.gov/survive and Gunviolencearchive.org. There are also programs for children’s response protocol with live remote trainings offered through iloveuguys.org.

Along with attack response training, Maui Health demonstrated how to apply pressure to a bleeding wound to stop the bleeding while awaiting proper treatment. For if blood loss is not contained, the average adult cannot survive longer than five minutes depending on the amount of loss. Therefore, Ms. Rogers instructed how to use a piece of clean cloth to “pack” a deep wound by stuffing apart of the cloth into the skin opening to plug the leak, buying survival time. Ms. Rogers also instructed use of a tourniquet for applying pressure to a limb and provided one for each attending member to practice with and take home.

We are grateful to our member, Maui Health, for providing such vital information and trainings to the industry and hope our members take advantage of such programs available. For more information or to contact Maui Health, visit https://www.mauihealth.org/injuryprevention/.

Photo caption: Training attendees at the Maui Memorial Medical Center, Sergeant Jan Pontanilla training Mark Boettger, Cameron Rogers of Maui Health.

Photo Credit: MHLA.