National Stop the Bleed Day: The impact of a social media campaign on the Stop the Bleed program.

Abstract

INTRODUCTION\nNational Stop-the-Bleed Day (NSTBD) was created to increase public awareness of the official Stop-the-Bleed® initiative and the Bleeding Control Basic course. The goal was to develop and employ an effective national social media strategy that would encourage and support efforts already in place to train the public in basic bleeding control techniques.\n\n\nMETHODS\nMarch 31, 2018 was designated as NSTBD. Analysis focused on a two-week window centered on NSTBD. The number of courses offered, number of instructors registered and total number of students trained overall during this period was derived from the American College of Surgeons (ACS) website bleedingcontrol.org. Courses not registered with the ACS were not included. Data on overall website activity was also included for analysis.\n\n\nRESULTS\n43 states and 18 countries participated in NSTBD. During the study period, there were 1884 courses registered on the bleedingcontrol.org (Figure 1). Comparatively, over a four-month period from August - November, 2017, the mean number of registered courses per month was 834. There were 34699 students trained during the two-week study period (Figure 2) as opposed to August - November 2017, the mean number of people trained per month was 9626. In addition, 576 new B-Con instructors were certified during this time window. Additionally, the international coordinators reported 1500 students were trained during the study period. During this time, the ACS reported a significant increase in website activity. This included 10,530 new visitors, 12772 visitors overall and 35342 page views recorded during the study period.\n\n\nCONCLUSION\nThe NSTBD effort was successful in generating widespread interest for the Stop-the-Bleed® initiative. The use of a targeted social media campaign in this context was successful in driving people to available training opportunities while also increasing awareness of the overall effort. While only in its early stages, the NSTBD concept is a good one and should be developed further in coming years.\n\n\nLEVEL OF EVIDENCE\nRetrospective, Level V.