A good first-aid kit is a must-have for anyone who considers themselves "prepared". Below, I have some photos of the one I have at my house, and it accompanies us on extended trips. While this may not quite live up to what a full-time paramedic might carry, it approaches that, and is way above what you're going to find for sale around town in most cases.
The bag itself is made by Lightning X Products. You can get a discount on this particular one at GovX if you're military, law enforcement or a first responder.
You can see how much it can hold once you open it up.
In the third photo you can see a pocket CPR mask, a nasopharyngeal airway, Israeli bandage, some Quckclot gauze, tourniquet, seatbelt cutter and a muslin bandage.
Next photo shows 18" of 3-0 nylon suture.
In the next pocket I have two packs of petroleum gauze, great for covering full thickness burns and maintaining a moist wound bed to promote healing. Often we see people trying to let their wounds "get some air", which we now know can cause excess drying and slow healing. Keeping a moist area allows the wound to move healing cells to the surface faster. However, overly moist wounds can end up losing those healing cells to easily. In that photo you also see a stack of 4"x4" gauze (12 of them), a triangle bandage (great for rigging up an arm sling) and an emergency blanket.
Next photo shows various sizes of syringes and needles to attach. These can be used to lance wounds if necessary. Make sure to use proper aseptic technique or sterile technique when necessary and when possible. There is also a #10 blade scalpel.
In the other side pocket I have alcohol wipes, iodine swabs, saline flushes, tweezers, a thermometer, tongue depressors, cotton tipped applicators and silk tape.
In one of the center compartments I keep a box of band-aids, some different sizes of Steri-Strips, some larger coverage band-aids, eye pads, ace wraps of different sizes and Iodoform for packing wounds. Iodoform packing will allow a wound to heal from the inside out and will help to fight infection. Use the cotton tipped applicators, and make sure to leave a bit of the packing hanging out so you can remove it as needed.
Next photo shows various sizes of gauze rolls. After that I've got a couple of instant cold packs, scissors, trauma shears (not the same as scissors but you don't HAVE to have both), curved hemostats (use these as your needle driver for suturing), a few large Tegaderms, a couple of IV start kits (they have rubber tourniquets, small Tegaderms, a bit of gauze, alcohol wipe, plastic tape), gravity IV tubing and two little bundles of what I need to start an IV. The two bundles include three IV catheters (18g, 20g and 22g), a saline flush and a "J-Loop".
The next photo shows my two bags of IV fluids that I carry in the bag. One is normal saline and the other is lactated Ringer's. These are both classified as "isotonic crystalloids". You don't have to know that. Just know that if someone is dehydrated or suffering hypotension from heat stroke or something, they need rehydration or a volume expander. These two are what we are using for first-aid because they're as close as we are going to get to blood contents for this purpose. We aren't going to start carrying D5 or 1/2NS or be dropping 20meq of potassium into anyone's fluid for first-aid today. Do not give anyone under the age of 12 any bolus of fluid over 250ml at one time. Also for adults, try giving half a bag at first and see if they respond positively.
Your bag should have reference material. In the next photo you see mine. Pretty basic. Pick these up at any decent book store. That's a pile of gloves between the two guidebooks.
After that you see an "ambu-bag" or bag-valve-mask (BVM). If you're lucky enough to obtain one of these, you need to have already learned to use it. Take a CPR class, please. The bag pictured also connects to the pocket mask you saw above.
Some additional items I will be adding: Paper tape (wife is allergic to silk and plastic tape). Several OTC medications including Ibuprofen, Tylenol and Benadryl. Pulse oximeter. Manual blood pressure cuff (you saw the stethoscope above, still looking for the cuff though). Berman airway kit (keeps the tongue in place during resuscitation).
Disclaimer: Use this advice at your own risk. You know what you can handle and what you can not. I'm not holding your hand and if you sue me, I don't have anything for you. I invest all my money in tangible tools I can use when the grid goes down. I have a lot of rakes, shovels and axes. If you need one, just ask for it and save yourself the lawyer fees. Good luck.
Here is the openview.
great set up. what will this set up run you money wise?
ReplyDeleteThe bag I got from www.govx.com for around $30. Military, LEO and first responders can create an account there for discounts on gear. That bag is available in other places. Just search for Lightning X Products and you'll see their stuff on multiple sites, including Amazon.
DeleteThe material inside, some was gathered by me at work from excess stuff that was going to be tossed or had accidentally ridden home with me in my pockets (like saline flushes and IV catheters). Some was obtained from the Army, again, from supplies that were going to be thrown out, mostly because they didn't know what they had. A lot of it can be bought online easily or even in stores like Walmart. Gauze and band-aids and scissors and all that.
Because I basically got a lot of it for free out of the "this is going in the dumpster" bin, I'm not sure of the cost. GovX has a kit from some company I can't recall, and it's going for more than $200, ready-stocked, and my kit you see above covers 90% of what's in their bag, but also has a couple of things that they don't include, like IV fluids.
The little medical guides can be found at bookstores. I got them during nursing school.
I also plan to add some triple antibiotic ointment.
ReplyDeleteAs a first responder I am ashamed to say i have nothing on par with your set up. I need to get cracking and get something on par with this.
DeleteI found your link on Zero Hedge. Thank you for this information.
ReplyDeleteRegarding antibiotics, honey or sugar are excellent in that capacity, and even kill bacteria which are resistant to conventional antibiotics. Please research the topic. I read about a bedridden patient in a hospital who had horrible bed sores which did not respond to treatment, and his doctor was going to amputate his feet, but a knowledgeable nurse suggested applying sugar to the sores. The doctor decided to follow the nurse's recommendation, since nothing else had worked, and the sores healed.
I have used honey or sugar on sores and wounds with excellent results, and keep some packets of sugar in a zip lock bag in my humble first aid kit for that purpose.
During my years working on a trauma/surgery floor, which obviously includes wounds of every kind, we had a few patients who had orders including honey for wound care. I remember specifically there were two of them. I know one had positive results, I don't recall the other.
DeleteHoney has been used to treat wounds for thousands of years because it is effective. Refined sugar is more recent but it also works because bacteria can not survive in an environment high in sugar, and that is why honey doesn't spoil (that does not mean that consuming large amounts of sugar is healthy). If the medical profession doesn't prescribe honey or sugar for wound treatment, it may be out of ignorance or because there is no profit in it. I know for a fact from personal experience that it works.
DeleteThere's plenty of evidence in support of what I have written. Anyone who is interested can do the research for themselves and draw their own conclusions.
I have peripheral vascular disease which causes blood to pool in the lower extremities, which in turn, due to poor circulation, caused sores on my feet which conventional antibiotics would not heal, but honey and sugar did. Please do the research. It may save you or your loved ones from a lot of needless suffering.
Also, A neighbor's cat got into a fight with another cat and had a deep wound that would not heal. He applied honey to the wound for several days and it healed.
Well I will have to say that anecdotal evidence isn't really sufficient for developing medical practice. Honey may have been used for thousands of years with a degree of success, but there are myriad other factors in play during old times that could have had an effect, negative or positive, and we also can not forget that millions of people throughout history died from very tiny wounds due to infection, regardless of what they put on it, be it honey, sugar or any other such remedies.
DeleteWhen I was working in trauma/surgical, we had a lot of people who weren't going to get anywhere putting honey on their surgical wounds after having a perforated bowel or a cellulitis infection of the leg that needed incision and drainage procedures.
I've done the research. I've done the research because I've applied honey to a patient's wounds, as I stated above we had at least two of them I can remember. I know one patient responded well to the honey-based treatments.
I acknowledge that honey can be effective in some circumstances, I'm not going to concede it as a magical cure-all. We haven't found that yet and probably never will.
When my appendix ruptured, I called an ambulance, and was taken to a hospital where the necessary surgery to save my life was performed. I am not opposed to modern medicine, nor am I invoking magic or anecdotal evidence, simply sharing what, from my personal experience and from what others have experienced has worked for certain ailments.
DeleteThat is all.
Here is an article to add to your research, in case you are not familiar with it:
DeleteThe use of granulated sugar to treat two pressure ulcers
http://www.wintjournal.com/media/journals/_/248/files/the-use-of-granulated-sugar-to-treat-two-pressure-ulcers.pdf
Thank you for this information. I have family that are first responders
ReplyDeleteand are always on me about having a kit in my car and home for are lil one and seeing this i think i will get one or two.