Why is Australia so against the use of tourniquets?

[tythataussieguy]

Is this a stance that we have just taken upon ourselves within the Australian community or is the world slowly following? When I ask this I am thinking of the use on patients with crush injury syndrome and major limb traumas.

I've only got a SFA so I'm interested to know others views.

[red_86]

It's not that they are against the use it just needs to be used as a last resort. senior first aid shouldn't need this skill nor do I recommend if you haven't trained or it isn't in your clinical guidelines don't do it.

[ftstn]

I recently did the care flight trauma course, Talking to the instructors ASNSW has recently started suppling them to crews again, One comment that was made was they have become more popular since the Afghanistan campaign and also a new surge of research in to the effect on them has shown them to be a valuable tool in trained hands.

I recently used an improvised one at a competition, when the judge questioned my use of it I pointed out that as long as I could tell exactly when I had applied it and why there should be no problems, And as an aside we never got penalised for using it

Maffu