TOTBV-05: USING REPURPOSED MATERIALS TO CREATE AFFORDABLE BLEEDING CONTROL (BCON) MODEL LIMBS FOR SKILLS TRAINING IN LOW RESOURCE ENVIRONS
Brad Chernock, PA-C, Vennila Padmanaban, MD, Kurun Oberoi, MD, Ziad Sifri, MD, FACS, Devashish Anjaria, MD, FACS; Rutgers - New Jersey Medical School

What problem in education is addressed by this work?:
The American College of Surgeons Bleeding Control course teaches basic skills such as tourniquet application, wound packing and direct pressure application to control life-threatening hemorrhage. These skills are heavily applicable in low to middle-income countries where traumatic injuries represent a significant burden of morbidity and mortality and there is limited access to prehospital care. However, commercial limb models utilized by the course are cost prohibitive and not widely available abroad, presenting the need for an affordable limb prototype model to teach the skills abroad.

Describe the intervention:
We created a model using discard fibrous packing material to represent muscle and soft tissue bulk wrapped around with discard unused Ioban steri-drapes which is fashioned in the form of arms and legs. Superficial and deep wound cavities are cut into the prototype limbs, which have been taken abroad in the context of short term surgical missions to teach the Bleeding Control courses. The models are then donated to local instructors on course completion to continue local education of bleeding control skills.

Describe how this intervention could be applied at other institutions. Please specifically comment on identified barriers that could exist and how they could be overcome:
This model is reproducible from discard materials making it an affordable alternative to commercial trainer models to be use in low resource settings domestically and abroad to teach bleeding control skills. As the course utilizes encourages a "train the trainer" model, it is important for instructors to be able to make the requisite model limbs through locally available materials if the specific materials described are not available. In a recent mission to Western Africa, discard cloth scraps were utilized in lieu of the packing material and enveloped in local hosiery to create limbs from completely local material with similar ability to teach the requisite skills of hemorrhage control.