Waterford ― Stop the bleed. Save a life.

Trauma surgeons and nurses at Lawrence + Memorial Hospital have been delivering that message to hospital staffers and members of the public in recent weeks, conducting free classes on how to respond to severe bleeding.

It’s a worthy endeavor, to put it mildly, given bleeding is the No. 1 cause of preventable death after injury.

Basically, you’ve got to locate the source of the bleeding, pack the wound with gauze or whatever fabric might be available, apply pressure until the bleeding stops and keep applying pressure until help arrives.

If the injured person cries out in pain, you know you’re doing it right.

Drs. Stephanie Joyce and Tania Torres-Sanchez, L+M trauma surgeons, and nurse Jessica Mancarella, who manages the hospital’s trauma program, presented “Stop the Bleed” instruction Tuesday during back-to-back classes at the Visiting Nurse Association of Southeastern Connecticut’s North Frontage Road offices.

More than a half-dozen visiting nurses attended the first of the sessions.

In an interview after the class, Joyce said she’s been pleased with the local response to the program, which the American College of Surgeons Committee on Trauma launched in 2017.

The organization, whose goal is to train 200 million people, says on its website that it’s reached 2.4 million so far.

“We’ve had at least 20 people per class, most of them community members,” Joyce said. “Obviously, it’s the news (that drives people to the classes). People see a mass shooting on the news at least once a week. They want to be prepared to save their loved ones.”

The 2012 shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, in which 20 children and six adults were killed, strongly influenced the program, Joyce told the class. Many of the deaths involved bleeding from compressible sites, she said, prompting a Connecticut trauma surgeon, Dr. Lenworth Jacobs Jr., to convene a panel that recommended ways to improve responses to severe bleeding.

Since the panel’s early meetings took place in Hartford, its recommendations became known as the Hartford Consensus.

L+M’s classes also have attracted people who take blood-thinning medication.

“They want to be able to stop their bleeding if they’re not near a hospital,” Joyce said. “I would say we get two or three people per class on blood thinners.”

For L+M, the classes are part of its bid to gain certification as a Level III trauma center, which would enable the hospital to treat certain trauma patients it now transfers to such Level 1 facilities (a higher status) as Yale New Haven and Hartford hospitals. Backus Hospital in Norwich is a Level III trauma center.

“Accreditation takes two to three years,” Joyce said. “We’re within two years of completing it. … One requirement is that we educate the community.”

After watching a slide presentation, Tuesday’s class attendees practiced what they had seen and heard, packing a dummy’s deep wound with gauze and practicing the proper application of a tourniquet, which Joyce and Mancarella said should be applied 2 to 3 inches above the wound and tightened until the bleeding stops.

“If the patient’s not screaming for you to stop, it’s not tight enough,” Joyce said. “What if you apply a tourniquet and the bleeding won’t stop? Apply a second tourniquet right next to it.”

L+M’s next “Stop the Bleed” class, open to the public, is scheduled for 4 to 5 p.m. March 8 at the hospital.

b.hallenbeck@theday.com