Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2020
DOI
10.1371/journal.pone.0242096
Publication Title
PLoS One
Volume
15
Issue
11
Pages
13 pp.
Abstract
A severe hemorrhage can result in death within minutes, before professional first responders have time to arrive. Thus, intervention by bystanders, who may lack medical training, may be necessary to save a victim's life in situations with bleeding injuries. Proper intervention requires that bystanders accurately assess the severity of the injury and respond appropriately. As many bystanders lack tools and training, they are limited in terms of the information they can use in their evaluative process. In hemorrhage situations, visible blood loss may serve as a dominant cue to action. Therefore, understanding how medically untrained bystanders (i.e., laypeople) perceive hemorrhage is important. The purpose of the current study was to investigate the ability of laypeople to visually assess blood loss and to examine factors that may impact accuracy and the classification of injury severity. A total of 125 laypeople watched 78 short videos each of individuals experiencing a hemorrhage. Victim gender, volume of blood lost, and camera perspective were systematically manipulated in the videos. The results revealed that laypeople overestimated small volumes of blood loss (from 50 to 200 ml), and underestimated larger volumes (from 400 to 1900 ml). Larger volumes of blood loss were associated with larger estimation errors. Further, blood loss was underestimated more for female victims than male victims and their hemorrhages were less likely to be classified as life-threatening. These results have implications for training and intervention design.
Original Publication Citation
Phillips, R., Friberg, M., Lantz Cronqvist, M., Jonson, C. O., & Prytz, E. (2020). Visual estimates of blood loss by medical laypeople: Effects of blood loss volume, victim gender, and perspective. PLoS One, 15(11), 13 pp., Article e0242096. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0242096
Repository Citation
Phillips, Rachel; Friberg, Marc; Lantz Cronqvist, Mattias; Jonson, Carl-Oscar; and Prytz, Erik, "Visual Estimates of Blood Loss by Medical Laypeople: Effects of Blood Loss Volume, Victim Gender, and Perspective" (2020). Psychology Faculty Publications. 109.
https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/psychology_fac_pubs/109
Included in
Cognition and Perception Commons, Diagnosis Commons, Fluids and Secretions Commons, Investigative Techniques Commons, Public Health Education and Promotion Commons
Comments
© 2020 Phillips et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.