Train With Willis

     By Jonathan Willis     It's easy to feel like you've "checked the box" by carrying a tourniquet. I see it all the time. Someone straps one on their kit or throws it into their glove box, and suddenly the feel squared away for trauma response.  Here's the reality: YOUR TOURNIQUET IS NOT A SYSTEM! And a system is what you want.  A tourniquet solves exactly one problem - uncontrolled extremity hemorrhage. Yes, that problem can kill quickly, it is far from the only life threatening bleed, or lethal trauma related injury you should leave your home prepared to deal with on a daily basis. DO NOT forget, you are 8X more likely to be party to a significant traumatic injury that a violent conflict. Does your training, or daily carry, reflect that reality? The Limits of the Tourniquet Let's be blunt: if you carry only a tourniquet, you are wrong. You are not prepared. Why? Because obviously, the body doesn't just bleed from the arms and legs. And remember, ...

by Jonathan Willis For a long time, Montgomery County, Ohio carried a grim title—the worst place in the nation for opioid-related deaths. That wasn’t just a headline for me. That was my backyard. That was where I spent my career responding to calls that, more often than not, ended in heartbreak. Over my years on the job, I responded to well over a thousand overdoses. WELL over a thousand. (I've tried to do the math and stopped) When I say that out loud, it barely seems possible. But every one of those calls was real—a kitchen floor, a gas station bathroom, a home with a room filled with bodies, a car that "randomly" rolled out of a parking lot into the middle of the street. I saw addiction, and accidental poisoning, and overdoses tear through families in every way imaginable. Parents burying children. Children burying parents. Siblings trying to make sense of it all. For years, I told myself I was unaffected. I wore the armor, kept my tone dry, brushed off the weight of i...