Our Blog: Equipping & Empowering

Wash your hands, wear your mask, 6 feet apart, just a few phrases that are now ingrained in our heads. You don't even think about these things anymore, you just do them. Now let's imagine an industrial accident at your plant. An employee has their arm stuck in a machine and is bleeding profusely, or a car accident where your loved one has arterial bleeding coming from their shoulder. Time is not on your side, and you are sitting there trying to remember what you learned 2-3 years prior in your bleeding control breakout session of class.

You see, there is a reason why seasoned airline passengers sit down, buckle their seat belts, put their tray tables up and stow their items under the seat in front of them. Day after day, they hear the flight attendant say the same 3-minute speech, so it becomes muscle memory. Did you know the average human only hears about 20% of what someone says to them? You may be asking where we're going with this. Well, it's quite simple, it's the importance of refresher training.

Regular refresher training helps individuals remember important but seldom-used information. Many times refresher courses reveal knowledge gaps and training needs within the organization. It's like learning a foreign language. If you don't use it, you lose it. When we look at Active Shooter Events, we must remind ourselves of the time gap between the actual violence and medical personal arriving on the scene. Studies show that the average response time for EMS in these events could be much longer than the 3-5 minute window an individual has to bleed out.

Skills such as tourniquet application, wound packing, chest seals; where and when to use them is a skill that must always be refreshed. Our goal is to build muscle memory and provide refresher trainings that continually review and practice these skills.

There are two types of people in a crisis — those who act and those who do not.

At ProActive Response Group, we talk a lot about having survivor's mindset. It's an important part of our training because in order to survive a violent encounter, you must first have the will to survive.

In today's blog article we want to dive a little deeper into this idea of a survivor's mentality by uncovering the five characteristics that are true of a survivor.

Surviving an active shooter event doesn't have to be based on chance or luck. Survival can be trained, and with the right skills and proactive steps in your back pocket, you can be prepared for something as unpredictable as an active shooter event.

Let's discuss four key pieces of knowledge that really could save your life in an active shooter situation. 

PRESS RELEASE

Greenville, SC January 24, 2020 – ProActive Response Group, a Greenville-based business that provides Active Shooter Response Training to schools, companies, religious establishments, and industrial facilities across the U.S. has been approved as a SHRM Recertification Provider.

As a SHRM Recertification General Provider, ProActive Response Group can award SHRM Professional Development Credits (PDCs) to HR professionals who complete their Active Shooter Response Training. The training is valid for up to 4 credits for the SHRM-CP^® or SHRM-SCP^®.

It's amazing how quickly a story of a workplace violence incident will go in and out of the news. From the perspective of an outside party reading the news or tuning in, active shooter events seem to be forgotten almost as quickly as they happen.

The thing is, there's a lot of aftermath a company deals with that the news doesn't cover. In order for a business, corporation or other organization to recover from a traumatic workplace violence incident, there must be an intentional plan or procedure for dealing with the aftermath.

Let's look at the steps companies should be taking in order to properly handle the aftermath of an active shooter event.

A brick and mortar business wouldn't think of operating without fire insurance. And yet, did you know that a workplace shooting is more likely to happen than a fire? 

The fastest growing type of murder in the United States is workplace violence. Most people are unaware of this reality, which is why the idea of active shooter insurance is just catching on for businesses, schools, and other organizations.

Most people have taken some form of first aid class at some point in their lives. Additionally, many people take first aid courses regularly because their jobs require it, or simply because they want to keep their certification up to date.

First aid training is an important skill to have. It prepares you to take action in a variety of situations. If someone is choking on a piece of food, First Aid training prepares you to do the Heimlich maneuver. Or, if a person has a heart attack and stops breathing, you would utilize your First Aid training by doing CPR.

However, there are a different set of emergency circumstances that could require different training.

For some organizations, such as South Carolina Public Schools, Active Shooter Training Drills are mandatory. They're a task on a to-do list and essentially a box that every school administrator is relieved to check off. 

Depending on what company you work for, Active Shooter Response Training may be mandatory as well. Many organizations are now requiring on-site training, video training, or some form of blended learning for their entire workforce.

It's not a small task. In both scope and importance, Active Shooter Training is a major undertaking. So, how can you be sure you're doing it right? In other words, how do you provide training that's not forgotten as quickly as it's taught? 

In this article, we'll point out training strategies that make an Active Shooter Training course successful, but first, we'll start by identifying some of the mistakes that could be undermining the training you're offering your team.

A question our customers often ask us is, why does ProActive Response Group offer Active Shooter Response Training in video format if hands-on training is so critical?

It's a good question, and the answer is found in the simple fact that not every company is able to provide hands-on training to every member of their corporate team. Two things typically stand on the way:

1. Limited budget
2. Large workforce

When these barriers are stopping a company from providing their employees with Active Shooter Response Training of any kind, we recommend blended learning. 

PRESS RELEASE

Greenville, SC July 31, 2019 – In the fall of 2018, Anderson County District One Schools made what turned out to be a lifesaving investment. They gave every employee the opportunity to take part in Active Shooter Response Training from ProActive Response Group. The training included instruction on how to stop massive bleeding, and the value of the course became apparent on July 22, 2019.