When we run our medical training courses we are often asked “what should the contents of an individual first aid kit aid worker ‘s seem to ask this question a lot!
We understand the pressures we are all under when it comes to equipment. Budgets and then the practicalities of carrying the stuff around, on and off planes and across borders often informs our decisions on the contents of an individual first aid aid worker version.
So where do we begin? Something to carry it in I guess. You can buy all sorts of different first aid kit bags, but we have some favourites [pictured]ย but it needs to be tough enough for your life and either needs to blatantly a first aid kit, or taking it in the opposite direct look like a camera bag or similar.
Contents of an individual first aid kit Aid Worker
So what goes in? We believe it’s best when an item has more than one use, but understand that sometimes this isn’t possible. For some of our media clients we even went as far as limiting the individualfirst aid kit to five items. We called it our desert island first aid kit [you need to be of a certain age to get that reference!], you might find some [poor quality] YouTube videos on our channel on this topic.
We have decided that we can squeeze in a few extra items for our aid work first aid kit, so here’s the headlines:
Tourniquet [our kits have a CAT-Combat Application Tourniquet]
Celox Gauze
Gauze [for wound packing]
Nasopharyngeal airway[s]
Nightingale Dressing
Olaes Dressing
Tuff cut shears
Sharpie Pen
SAM Splint
Tri-angular bandage
Space blanket [foil type]
Small role of gaffer tape/gorilla tape
There is normally some vinyl gloves, but the kit I picked up for this article was missing those, but that’s about it.
Now obviously we could add stuff, take some away, but most of the items here are easy to use [get some training to make sure you can use under pressure] and don’t have expiry dates, or they are long or it doesn’t really matter- I mean can a bandage expire?
So what’s it all for? If you have done a first aid or hostile environments courses [like our ones here] then it should all make sense, but hopefully the video below will make some sense of what the items are and why we have chosen them.
Recently when we ran some training for aid workers in Senegal we hit the problem that there was no budget to buy first aid kits, so we had to put out thinking caps on. If you would like to know what improvised and/or low cost first aid equipment we came up with drop me a line: alistair[at]lazarustraining.co.uk
We hope to post some more video content soon, for example a first aid kit on a budget.