Bleed control kits added to defibrillator cabinets
BBCEmergency bleed-control kits are being added to defibrillator cabinets across Nottinghamshire in a bid to help save lives.
The kits contain a number of items, such as tourniquets and trauma dressings, to equip people with the tools to help stop rapid bleeding in an emergency.
It comes as part of an initiative led by the Academy Transformation Trust Further Education College, based in Sutton-in-Ashfield, which has partnered with East Midlands Ambulance Service (EMAS) to share potentially life-saving skills.
The kits will be placed inside pre-existing defibrillator cabinets, and it is hoped more than 1,000 kits will be installed across the county by August, the college said.
The college launched the Stop The Bleed Initiative in 2025, alongside a number of partners, to offer free, hands-on emergency training to communities across the county.
Principal of the college, Liz Barrett, said: "It's really important that we get that knowledge out there and people have the resilience to attend to a bleed incident, whether that's a knife incident, or an accident."
The college said the coordinated effort with EMAS marked a "major milestone" in the project.
Michael Barnett-Connolly, head of community response at EMAS, said: "It's really important to get to anybody who suffers a catastrophic bleed, a severe bleed, within the first couple of minutes.
"And the bleed kits are linked to our command and control, so if there's a bystander who calls 999 and there's been an incident, our call taker in our control centre can then direct the bystander to then fetch the bleed kit, take it to the patient's side and use the contents."
The scheme is expected to cost £96,000, for which the college said it continued to fundraise.
A number of organisations have already donated to the cause, the college said.
On Wednesday, Adele Cook, whose husband James was fatally stabbed in Newark in May 2025, attended the installation of the first kit in a defibrillator cabinet in Kirkby-in-Ashfield.
James was pronounced dead at the scene in Castle Gate in Newark on 1 May.
Cook said: "It's turned our lives upside down and it's miserable knowing what's happened to James, but when I see something like this happening it gives me some joy.
"It gives me some happiness that someone [is] sitting up, taking notice and saying, 'What can we do today to change this happening tomorrow?' That's the main thing."
Brandon Byrne, 22, of Winston Court, Newark, pleaded not guilty to murdering Mr Cook and another charge of possessing an offensive weapon in public in 2025. A two-week trial is due to begin in April.
EMAS said there were plans to expand the coordinated approach to distributing the kits across Leicestershire and Derbyshire in the near future.
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