North Allegheny Senior High School
Senior? Yes
Elite top 100? Yes
Letters of recommendation: Letter of Recommendation 1, Letter of Recommendation 2
Tick-tock, tick-tock. Each tick of the clock brings us closer to losing someone from uncontrolled blood loss. Between the 7 minutes that it takes for an ambulance to arrive and the 3 minutes that it takes for a person to bleed out, the number of preventable deaths that occur is massive. As an EMT, I recognized this concept early on and used this motivation to launch a “Stop the Bleed” campaign in my community. I now train civilians on how to correctly utilize basic bleeding control equipment and work with administrative officials to make this equipment available in public areas. I realized that spending just one hour with my classes teaches them the two-minute procedure of tourniquet/gauze application that could be the difference between life and death.
When the Pittsburgh Synagogue shooting happened earlier this year, I remember feeling extremely angry and powerless. However, as I passed the nurse’s office at school, I recalled an incident that had transpired at the end of my junior year. The nurse told me that a student had walked in earlier that week after he had inadvertently shot a nail into his chest during tech-ed. The nail was still lodged into his skin, and although their gut-reaction was to pull it out, they quickly stopped. One of the points of bleeding control that I emphasize in my lectures is that “You never pull out an impaled object as it acts a blood plug”. Remembering this, they left the nail in place. As soon as they removed the nail at the hospital, the student’s lung collapsed and he was immediately sent to the ICU. It was chilling to think that if they had pulled out the nail at school, the student’s life surely would have been in grave danger. I was ecstatic to realize that one point I had mentioned worked towards saving a person’s life. Recollecting this incident gave me the slight boost of confidence that I needed. I thought to myself, if every person who attends my lectures applies one point that they learn in an emergency, we can save numerous lives.
It’s disheartening to hear of all the mass-casualty incidents that take place. It seems as if there is no end to the violence and no limit to the number of people who die as a result of it. There are times when I feel dejected and demoralized, but ultimately what gives me hope is this: although correcting the root causes of this violence may be a long and societally challenging process, we can immediately work towards cutting down on the number of casualties. For me, volunteerism means using public education as a tool to empower those around me to act. This is what motivates me to continue to host training sessions, and it’s what drives me to believe that one day we will live in a society where people have the skills and knowledge to take positive action when needed, so that a countless number of lives can be saved.