What's in an ideal first aid kit

[BobL]

After attending a chainsaw users course yesterday here is a question posed to us that made me think.
How many of you have a first aid kit in your shed/truck and what's in it?
How many have a first aid kit in any building near your shed (eg your house) and know where it is and what's in it?

While we're on the subject, What do you think should be in a typical wood workers first aid kit?

[Wood Butcher]

Must have for a woodie - Tweezers and a splinter pick/remover

In mine is: -
box of band aids (assorted shapes & sizes)
Pressure gauze
2 x roll bandages
small bottle saline eye wash
Scissors
Tweezers
Splinter pick/remover
Paper type medical tape

Hasn't got everything but it has the essential for me. The one in the house is stocked with everything you could ever want but that is mainly because mum was a nurse so we got real cheap supplies;)

[Pat]

On top of the butcher's list, more saline as current doctrine is to use saline for wound cleaning as well as cleaning out eyes. A couple of sealable plactic bags (zip loc) and a few trianglar bandages. I also have a couple of size 13 and 15 wound dressings. If you have a beer fridge, a cold pack is a good idea too.

[Groggy]

I keep spray on skin so I don't stain the output.

[ozwinner]

I carry a StJohns kit in the Yoot.

Al :)

[dazzler]

FIRST AID KITS....

Thats bl**dy unaustralian.:((

Its an aussie tradition to drip blood on mums new rug :D and then all over the kitchen sink lookin for a bandaid.

Now enough of this first aid kit talk:((.


:wink: :D

[BobL]

At the Chainsaw User course it was recommend including a couple of large zip lock backs to transport any bits you might cut off to the hospital with the victim.

As far as bandaids and wound dressings go I reckon "fixomull" is the way to go. It comes in a long roll and you cut strips off it as required. This evening I found out it sticks like a rabid terrier even in petrol!

[glock40sw]

FIRST AID KITS....

Thats bl**dy unaustralian.:((

Its an aussie tradition to drip blood on mums new rug :D and then all over the kitchen sink lookin for a bandaid.

Now enough of this first aid kit talk:((.


:wink: :D

Yep Totally agree...If you can't fix it with a Leatherman and a roll of Insulation tape, then your dead.:2tsup:

Stabbed myself numerous times fitting bird wire to the new aviary. The easy way to clean up the blood was to just drop me hand and the dog would clean up the leak clean as a whistle. He keeps eyeing me as if I was a Big Mac...maybe he has developed a taste for me?

[RufflyRustic]

Hmm, For me, I'd add the dettol and plenty of clean material for soaking up the blood coz I think mine is precious and I don't like seeing (or feeling) it spilt :rolleyes:

...and maybe some sort of emergency buzzer, so if HWMNBO heard it, he'd know to come running ....

[Bob38S]

An eyewash bottle - not bath.

The bottle I have has an eyecup on the top and like a shower rose in the bottom.

Fit eyecup to eye

Squeeze the bottle and the eye is washed out.

Excess/used eyewash is vented down a tube on the side of the bottle to avoid contamination.

[zelk]

Keep in mind unpreserved saline will not keep for long, once opened.
Zelk

[soundman]

I keep a prety comprehensive firstaid kit in each vehicle. I usualy near one of the vehicles.

there are lists of "required" firstaid kits on most of the government WHS sites.

I recon they are a bit lean on.

start with 3 x 3" heavy elastic bandages..... thats the minimum for doing a proper job of a snake bite and they will do all sorts of other stuff.

several sizes of nonadherant dressings

bandaids are great.... its surprising what you can nail back down with a bandaid.

a pack of plastic tubes or normal saline... they usualy come in a pack of 5.
It basicaly a source of sterile water... & yess they do have preservative in them.

a bottle of isapropil ( isocol)... for cleaning hands and unbroken skin arround wounds....... after it evaporates various adhesive products will stick.

oh there is heaps that should be in there.
I should list up my kit.

don't forget triangular bandages they are still the best way to dress a head wound or an amputation

packages trauma dressings are good and compact..... you just hope not to use them.

Burnaid....... this stuff is great and not limited to a burn dressing ....... turned out to be a good universal wet wound dressing... sterile, antiseptic and soothing.

one of the best realisations I had is that lots of stuff comes in single use sachets.......

alco wipes are good for cleaning up splinter sites

a realy good strong, very pointy set of tweesers, is imperative for a wood worker. Good for getting ticks off too.

I'll do a list.... I need to check my kits anyway.

cheers

[soundman]

Oh two realy important things.

gloves and recuss mask.

I carry standard latex surgical gloves and heavier blue high risk gloves.

Remember the gloves are primarily for your benifit...... most of the ampbo's put em on before the step out of the truck these days.

the light ones for actulay doing first aid

the blue ones for handling other things and people.

the gloves also work as a hasardous waste container..... you put spent wipes & dressings in the palm of your left hand and take that glove off with the right leaving the filth inside the inside out glove the you do the same with the right.
anything infectious is then double bagged inside the two gloves and you havn;t touched it.

Since the last revision of the CPR stuff a recuss mask is considered mandatory.
but get a good one.
In my last course I tested a couple of the disposable masks on the dummy. the only disposable that I was happy with was the one with the little blue plastic rectangular thing in the middle.
the others it was almost impossible to get proper air flow.


of course zip lock baggies for spare bits and infectious waste.

cheers

[glock40sw]

Jesus Soundie.
You are a mobile ER.

[soundman]

If you are going to have a first aid kit it might as well be a good one.:D
I want the good stuff arround if me & mine need it.

cheers

[Lignum]

A bottle of yellow hot stuff super glue and accelerator is my first aid kit. Brilliant to stop bleeding :)

[soundman]

as promised a picture of one of my first aid kits..... they are all set up the same.

there are things that shouldnt be there...... so you cant see them:D .... like panadol, imodium & phenergran.

cheers

[Article99]

holy crap! :o your work vehicles don't look like ambulances by any chance, do they? :p

So called 'first aid kit' at work & home consists of;

-Roll of tape.
-A few clean cotton rags.
-A homemade (see homebutchered) hss knife.
-A fine bottle of 15 yo, single malt scotch.

Ideally, you could get away with only items 1,2&3, but I enjoy my liquid medicine after attempting to grind a digit or two on a diamond wheel at work. :roll:

It's not a cut. It's not a burn. It just hurts like hell, bleeds like a bastard initially and then aches for weeks afterwards. :doh:

[doug1]

I have a $35 kit that has a number of additives including burn spray, various tablets, saline in single use mini bottles (eye cleaner etc) real band aids and plaster and a few other assorted items which my acredited daughter thinks is way too much.

from one who made her own kit at about 8 to take guiding

[bsrlee]

I have a few small watertight boxes I bought from the kitchen section of my local bargain shop - I have one in each of my day-to-day backpacks and one in the workshop. I keep an assortment of bandaids, latex gloves, some asprin, a couple of zip-lock bags (you want inner & outer bags - ice in outer bag, finger in inner bag) and some of the superfine splinter tweezers LV sell. I haven't seen any chemist shops around my suburbs selling more advanced First Aid stuff like resus. masks & shell dressings.

If its too big or complex for my kit, I keep my mobile in my pocket - ring 000, give my location & stagger out to the roadside, fall down & wait for ambo.

[scanfor]

Hope you have some anti-SEPTIC in there - nice tank!

[Pete J]

I always keep a nubile young lady in the first aid kit. You never know when or where you might get bitten by a snake. And it must be obvious to everyone that if you want the poison sucked out, there are lots of places you just can't reach yourself.

Regards

[soundman]

two things that I have found.
The local chemist is far from the best place to obtaim firstaid supplies.
genuine band aid brand .... bandaids do worh the best.

cheers

[Rel]

Has anyone mentioned a pair of clean, sharp scissors. Surely you can't use all that one pack of bandage roll on your finger:)

[soundman]

top left hand compartment.
one pair of blunt/pointy type surgical scissors:D

when you buy the small bandages at the right place they are 20 to 30 cents each...... but they are often too long.

cheers

[Clinton1]

1/2 a towel is enough for me.

[rsser]

+ Space blanket, in case of shock.

Echo Soundman's point about gloves if you're treating someone else. Lotsa folk out there have HIV or Hep C and don't know it or won't be in a state to tell you.

[soundman]

antiseptic top tray, front left.

space blanket bottom right with the triangular babdages.


One thing mant poeple fail to understand & this includes many in the medical area is...... that gloves are primarily for the protection of the wearer not the patient.


cheers

[Hingrock]

My suggestion for a basic kit when working with chainsaws is lots of trauma dressings (the big thick ones) and also some roller bandages to hold them on.

Whenever you are losing heaps of blood you want something that will soak up heaps and then clot up to slow the bleeding and the roller bandages are the fastest, easiest way of keeping them on.

And of course, a couple of bags to put the missing bits in prior to going to hospital.

[soundman]

trauma dressings... top tray to the right at the back.:D
they are bigger than they look packed and come with bandage attached.

there are bigger thicker ones.

I'd probaly slap a non adherant down first.

remember all this stuff is relativly cheap if you buy it from a good industrial first aid supplier.

one thing I will get next time i'm there is some steritabs. they are those thin adhesive strips used as wound closures.

First aid when you are close handy to a doctor or casualty ward is one thing when you have a some distance to travel or a reason you can't go straight there.... well thats another thing.

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

cheers

[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 (http://www.realfirstaid.co.uk/superglue/)

[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/remote-first-aid-kit.html) http://www.accidental.com.au/media/technicalinformation/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!

-----------

* First Aid For Motorcyclists (http://www.firstaidformotorcyclists.com.au/) 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............