Health Leadership Apprentice Program coordinator Landon A. Hackley authored the following post.
Claire Zagorski has been saving lives on the front lines from a very young age. She worked at St. David’s South Austin Medical Center for eight years as a harm reduction paramedic, but now uses her license to walk the streets of Austin administering and teaching people how to use emergency Naloxone in the event of an opioid overdose. She helps treat people with infected wounds from heroin use. She is a non-traditional student with an undergraduate degree in anthropology from UT. To top things off, she was a member of the first Health Leadership Apprentice class in the summer of 2017 who left a living, lasting legacy at Dell Medical School through her founding of UT’s chapter of Stop the Bleed.
After listening to a trauma conference at Dell Seton Medical Center, Zagorski learned about Stop the Bleed, a national initiative that was created under the Obama Administration following the Sandy Hook shooting in 2012. It was created based on findings that many of the children from Sandy Hook died from bleeding out of wounds from their extremities, a tragedy that could have been prevented had bystanders known how to take action. Not long after, the tragic stabbing of Zagorski’s classmate, UT student Harrison Brown, occurred on campus. After talking to fellow UT students following the event, she discovered that those who were at the scene “felt like there was nothing they could do but wait” as they watched their friend and classmate bleed out. This lit a new fire in Zagorski’s heart to train as many people as she could on bystander intervention.
It started with her poster pitch at the end of her HLA summer in August of 2017, and she held her first class Oct. 26 of the same year after months of hard work. Through coordination with Dell Med’s very own Steve Steffensen and others, Zagorski started the UT chapter of Stop the Bleed. Since October, she has trained over 2,000 people and counting. Zagorksi didn’t stop there when she went on to “train as many EMTs and nurses as she could” on how to teach Stop the Bleed to keep the program going. Zagorski says she couldn’t have done it alone.
“It takes many people to help teach, host classes, and make sure everyone gets the attention they need [in class]” she remarked. “It was really a beautiful effort of many people who cared.”
Since leaving UT, Zagorski has continued her education at the University of North Texas Health Science Center pursuing a master’s degree in medical science and hopes to apply to medical school upon completion of the program. When she is not out and about saving lives, Zagorski likes to play the French horn, compose music, bake and hike.
If you are interested in Zagorski’s program, reach out to current Stop the Bleed Program Coordinator Elva Ye or visit the program’s website to sign up for the next training.