COVINGTON, Ga. - Piedmont Newton Hospital’s emergency medical technicians worked with local law enforcement officers Friday, June 7 on how to save a life with the help of the alphabet.

Brent Demark and Jan Fowler, EMTs, led the fourth meeting of Stop the Bleed, a nationwide campaign that trains people how to stop life-threatening bleeding, at Piedmont Newton. Demark and Fowler educated law enforcement officers from the Newton County Sheriff’s Office on how to effectively compress a wound to save an injured person from bleeding out.

The NSCO deputies were taught how to save an injured person from bleeding out through the ABCs of bleeding. The ABCs of bleeding include: 

• Alert, a reminder to call 911 before performing care to the injured person; 
• Bleeding, find the source of the bleeding;
• Compress, apply pressure via hands, tourniquet or packing

Since Stop the Bleed was introduced to Newton County in April 2019, one life has been saved.

“The night they [law enforcement] used it they called us,” Fowler said. “They showed us their body cams just to make sure they did it right. They were very confident. You could see they knew exactly what they were doing.”

Newton County’s law enforcement agencies are the first to receive Stop the Bleed training; however, Sarah Teach, public relations and communications at Piedmont Newton, hopes the training will expand to more counties.

“We hope to work with surrounding counties in the future to train their officers,” Teach said. “In the future, we plan to work with the school system to train teachers and bus drivers.”

Stop the Bleed first began in October 2015 during a White House event. It was initiated by a workgroup, consisting of The White House’s National Security Staff, to “put knowledge gained by first responders and our military, into the hands of the public to help save lives,” a White House news release stated.

Stop the Bleed meets once a month at Piedmont Newton.