Mercy Health – Marcum and Wallace Hospital held a ceremony last month and presented 38 trauma kits to the sheriff’s departments of Estill, Lee, Owsley and Powell counties.
Trena Stocker, president of Marcum and Wallace Hospital, was the first to hear about an initiative led by the Cincinnati chapter of Sheep Dog Impact Assistance (SDIA). This group wanted to place a trauma kit in every sheriff’s department in the state of Kentucky.
Our team wanted to make sure that the sheriff’s departments in the counties Marcum and Wallace Hospital serves received these kits. So, from there, we got in touch with Dave Jardon, Sheep Dog Impact Assistance Cincinnati chapter commander, to make sure this happened.
“As a Level IV trauma center, this project aligned with our goal of providing stabilizing care in our community,” Trena explains. “To reach that goal, it is imperative that we work with all counties and all first responders to ensure they get the tools they need to provide that care to patients.”
In fact, Dave and his team helped in the emergency response to the tornadoes that struck Kentucky late last year.
“We’ve seen that many rural departments are very underfunded,” Dave says. “They don’t have bandages or pain medicine in their cruisers, and we wanted to do something about that.”
The trauma kits include basic first aid items for daily use. They also include an emergency trauma pouch for more life-threatening wounds. It is all packed in a plastic ammo container for easy storage and access.
And today, each sheriff’s deputy car in Estill, Lee, Owsley and Powell counties has a trauma kit, with even an extra kit for their offices. Each trauma kit costs $65 to create and the Greater Cincinnati Chapter of Sheep Dog Impact Assistance collects donations to make the kits possible.
SDIA is a nonprofit organization that honors and assists military and first responders and their families. Military veterans, law enforcement, fire and rescue and EMS personnel are known as sheep dogs since their role is to protect the flock of Americans.
Learn about our mission, vision and values at Mercy Health.
