Law enforcement officers are usually the first public safety personnel to arrive on the scene when people have been severely injured. Consequently, many police agencies are now supplying their officers with lifesaving first-aid kits and the training on how to use the tourniquets and chest seals they contain. However, most police officers are not emergency medical personnel and they often encounter emergency care situations beyond their experience.
That’s why Zoll Medical is offering the Mobilize Trauma Kit line to law enforcement. The kits contain critical first-aid tools and are complemented by an app that walks people through how to provide just-in-time care. “Even if you have trained to use a tourniquet, applying it under stress is very different. The app helps reduce that stress and provides just-in-time instruction,” says Beth Clay, Zoll’s marketing manager for global public safety.
The Mobilize app and Mobilize Trauma Kits were created by emergency medical specialists who were trying to address the 7- to 14-minute gap between calls to 911 and help arriving for medical emergencies by giving people the tools and instruction they need to save lives. The app walks you through triage. “Is the patient badly bleeding?” it asks. If you answer “yes,” it tells you what to do, including tourniquet and chest seal application. Next it tells you to check consciousness and breathing. If the victim isn’t breathing, it asks if you have an AED (automated external defibrillator). If you don’t have one, it provides CPR instruction including a click tone to help you maintain the proper rhythm.
Zoll’s Mobilize Trauma kits come in four sizes: the Comprehensive Trauma Kit, the Mobile Trauma Kit, the Public Access Trauma Kit, and the Compact Trauma Kit.
The Compact Trauma Kit contains basic tools officers need to stop bleeding and is built specifically for use by officers and other individuals to help other people. But it can also be used to aid the wearer. “If there’s a law enforcement officer who’s injured and can’t really do anything to save themselves, there’s tools right there for a bystander to help the officer and the app to instruct them on how to use the tools,” Brooks says.
The larger Comprehensive and Mobile kits have enough gear for responding to a multiple-casualty incident, and they actually include a tablet computer ready to play the app. “Whenever you open the lid, the tablet powers on and launches the app,” Brooks said.
Mobilize is a complement to Zoll’s line of AEDs that have been in use by law enforcement for decades. “We sell AEDs to law enforcement agencies, and pairing the Mobilize Compact trauma kit with the AED provides officers with a powerful set of tools that can help with most medical emergencies they encounter,” says Brent Brooks, national sales manager for law enforcement at Zoll. “The Compact kit is small enough where officers can wear it on their belt or keep it in their vehicles. Then they have the app on their phones to help them properly use the tools.”
Zoll says public safety professionals have used the Mobilize app and Mobilize Trauma Kits to help save lives. “Sheriff Charles Blackwood of Orange County, NC, purchased Mobilize kits for the agency’s patrol cars,” says Matt Grey, associate product manager for Mobilize.
“Within the first week of getting the equipment, his deputies responded to a scene where a victim was shot twice in the chest and they used the Mobilize Comprehensive Kit. The trauma surgeon said later that if the deputies hadn’t applied chest seals, the victim would not still be alive,” Grey says.
