What's in an ideal first aid kit

[rsser]

Its interesting that all the basic first aid courses these days assume that the ambulance is no more than 20 min away
cheers

Yeah. Though there is the occasional remote first aid course offered.

When out with the m/c club it'll sometimes take 10 mins to get to mobile coverage after an off, then 5 mins calling, then another period before the ambos arrive. And not many folk know how to recognise and treat shock, which is the biggest (treatable) risk.

btw, butterfly strips are also good with a cut that'll need stitching.

[Stewey]

Another vote for supa-glue: a cardboard pack of 6-8 of them from Dollar-Dazzlers or Silly Sollys etc.
It's wonderful for filling up cracks in skin, small cuts, etc - like a plastic skin and a callous all in one, keeping further dirt etc out while you get back to work.

Also, a bag of women's sanitary pads. They make great wound coverings and can be cut to size.
(we've not needed to use them on ourselves, but we also have a farm, and they're the best priced wound dressings for veterinary purposes!)

Keep 2 pairs of scissors in the kit - one will always be blunter than the other...

[rsser]

You need to be wary of super glue if it's not medical/veterinary grade. superglue — REAL First Aid

[Mobyturns]

Whats in an ideal First Aid Kit? I will be cheeky and say NOTHING. In an ideal world we would not require one.

I think that what is in the ideal kit is very dependent upon how far away, both in time and distance, you may be from medical aid, and the potential injuries including snake bite etc. When using chainsaws etc we are often in remote areas that are difficult for emergency services to find from our descriptions of our location.

10km from the blue mail box ant turn left, run for 2km till you meet the Y junction yadda yadda - means very little to a call center worker. GPS makes it easier but there is still the difficulty in describing access.

So the kit has to contain sufficient materials / supplies to cater for the potential injuries that may be inflicted in a typical pear shaped event.

As a surveyor working in very remote areas we had HF radio in the early days and these days mobile & sat phones BUT you still have to perform the emergency first aid and you still have to establish communications which can be quite difficult in some of the areas we access. Our work kits were modeled upon the RFDS recommendations but they were not RFDS kits as they did not have the drugs. For my personal first aid kit for private use I carry far more large wound dressings, 3" & 4" crepe bandages and triangular bandages than recommended - at least twice the quantity suggested for "Outback Kits."

I speak from experience as I have attended several very traumatic road accidents in over 30 years of travelling - never a chainsaw accident. Though we helped recover another surveyor from another company, purely coincidence that we were both in the same area at the same time. The surveyor was injured in a tree felling accident doing the "wrong thing" two chainsaws working in tandem clearing lines. Both operators lost awareness of what the other was doing! The result, spinal injuries and no chance of a heli retrieval due to heavy forest or any vehicle access to within at least 2 km of the injury site. Fortunately the back injury was not critical but has left the surveyor with life long pain etc.

These events are not nice and it is definitely not a time to think "I wish I had ...." Chainsaw injuries are relatively rare. Road trauma is the most likely event to encounter and it is often multiple casualties that require emergency first aid to stem bleeding etc. Crepe, & triangular bandages, pads, shirts anything clean is invaluable in those instances - trust me! There were a couple that didn't make it and we certainly didn't have enough zip lock bags for all the bits.

[Mobyturns]

This is a good start Remote First Aid Kit http://www.accidental.com.au/media/t...ion/101492.pdf expensive but well worth it if you do a lot of remote travel. These kits are great if you only have one major casualty or a couple with minor injuries.

Double up on the recommended qty for bandages & triangular bandages. In later years I always carried 3 x 3" crepe bandages and 1 triangular bandage in a bum bag while a reasonable distance away from the vehicle & first aid kit. Three simple bandages can do a lot - pressure bandage for snake bite, stem some pretty severe bleeding etc. This was additional to the kit quantities.

Another item well worth carrying extra of in a kit is saline solution or at least have access to good clean water for cleaning wounds. Plenty of drinking water is also a good idea as one of the most significant risks is heat stress / stroke, which I have had to deal with multiple times because people are stubborn and stupid!

Gloves! Its nice to have some protection for yourself. A pack of 5 gloves is useless - 10 at least.

Ice! or cool packs - very handy for sprains and for heat stress.

Oh - don't tick & flick on quantities if you do first aid kit checks. You do do that don't you. Not a good time to find the sticky isn't sticky any more or the gloves fall apart, or the saline expired ten years ago etc.

To state the obvious - a quality first aid kit with all the good gear is not much use if you don't know how to use it. Do a senior first aid course.

[BobL]

Good to see an old thread getting some new comments. The whole idea behind these poll type threads was less about the contents of a first aid kit and more about jogging the minds of members who maybe are a bit far away from a kit and so should consider having one in their shed .

[Mobyturns]

Good to see an old thread getting some new comments.

How do they come up again? I though older threads were closed to new comments?

[rustynail]

Worked with an old chap once, his first aid kit consisted of a $20 note, a shovel and a pistol. I asked him how he figured that to be a first aid kit? He said,"$20 note is to bribe me offsider if I get bit by a snake and cant reach to suck the poison out, pistol's handy if he won't take the bribe, shovels good if I need to dispose of the body and the pistol again if me injury is real serious like."
Like I said, I only worked with him once.

[rsser]

heheh.

I recently did a 1st aid course for motorbike riders*. It was a real eye-opener. But then the last one, on workplace first aid, was decades ago.

One of the things that's changed is CPR: the official position now is that the 'kiss of life' is not needed. The sternum presses are sposed to also move some air. Now the trainers actually recommended doing the breath stuff, and they could as the program didn't follow the accredited curriculum.

They also recommended against removing the rider's helmet unless there was breathing difficulty. Too much risk of making spine damage worse.

And ABC is now DRABC and I think D!

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* First Aid For Motorcyclists These folk are travelling the country offering courses. I found it excellent.

[bsrlee]

I have found that when I have injured myself in the workshop enough to stop working I just don't have enough hands to do much beside trying to hold the hole closed and say 'golly gosh' or something similar. Then I have to wait until the leaking (mostly) stops and apply bandaids/antiseptic or walk over to the neighbours and ask for a lift to the local hospital for some stitches.

So the most useful thing is a second, uninjured person to make calls and apply dressings from the supply in the box/cupboard.

I really should clean the blood off the back of the bathroom door one of these days............