Credit: Linkoping University
When an accident occurs, the reactions of bystanders are important. Researchers have studied whether laypeople realise the severity of the situation when someone in their proximity begins to bleed, and whether they can estimate how much the person is bleeding. The results show a discrepancy related to the victim s gender: for a woman losing blood, both blood loss and life-threatening injuries were underestimated. The study has been published in the scientific journal
PLoS One.
Researchers from Linköping University and Old Dominion University in the United States wanted to study the ability of laypeople to visually assess blood loss, and what influences them when judging the severity of an injury.