Please be careful doing this.

As a former EMT, unless remaining in the vehicle will further endanger them, fire..water..not breathing..etc., if you are not trained in removing an injured person from a vehicle, you shouldn't.

Triage: When there is more injuries than personnel one has to figure out which patients to treat first.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triage


I'm all for attending a first aid course. There's no way you can read yourself the skills of CPR, which saves lives. As with several other life saving skills, techniques and methods.


On the other hand there is no magic involved in treating burns (cool it - NOW!), cuts (clean it! cover it!) and other small injuries.


My favorite items are:
- Sterile bandadas (yep, the big triangle cloth). Much easier to apply to basically anything than bandages. Much more versatile.
- Some band-aid and steri strips for minor cuts.
- tweezers
- Aloe vera gel (for itches and burns)
- Something to clean / sterilize wounds.
- Sportstape.
- Any personal medication that you are dependent on.

If you give someone a medication, (i.e. aspirin for a heart attack) are you protected by the good samaritan laws? The reason I ask is that I'm on an emergency response team at my job. We keep fairly well stocked first aid cabinets throughout the campus, but we are strongly discouraged from actually giving someone a medication. We are trained in CPR and basic first aid. Med administration is outside of our scope of practice. The meds in the cabinets are there for someone to pick out for themselves.

Which brings up another interesting point. There have been discussions of putting medications in some sort of vending machine where there is a miniscule charge to buy them. Not for financial reasons, but rather to get them shows a determined effort. Otherwise, if someone were to take a handful of Ibuprofen home and then have an allergic reaction, the company could conceivable be held liable.

Madness .....

Thanks,
LW

We are very strongly advised against medications here too.

The last three times I re-certified for my first aid tickets the only two medications they suggested were sugar if you were dealing with a diabetic starting to have seizures, and aspirin for heart problems (chest pains).
With both of these the drug does no harm if they don't need it and does good if they do need it.

We are severely warned against doing anything invasive like cutting into their airway to insert a tube. You are not a surgeon so don't do it.
The same thing goes for amateur IV.

Even the plastic airways that you put in from the mouth require special training.
It is easy to put them in wrong and open a way into their stomach instead of their lungs.

We are not even supposed to give a person medications that they have with them.
Not even nitroglycerin heart pills or hitting them with an EpiPen if they are having an allergy problem.

We are able to help them take them but not to administer them ourselves.

In California the "Good Samaritan" laws were recently crippled by our state Supreme Court. A person who pulled someone from a vehicle they thought was going to catch fire was sued by the person they rescued. The victim ended up paralyzed, and doctors weren't sure if it was from the original crash or from the removal. CA Supreme court allowed the suit, 4-3. They ruled the Good Samaritan law only protects you when you are giving "emergency medical care", and not for any other acts.

Search for "California Good Samaritan Law" if you want to be further appalled.

I guess as wrong as it seems to be, in this context it makes sense. I googled Good Samaritan Laws and found this on Wikipedeia.

"Good Samaritan provisions are not universal in application. The legal principle of imminent peril may also apply.[8] In the absence of imminent peril, the actions of a rescuer may be perceived by the courts to be reckless and not worthy of protection. To illustrate, a motor vehicle collision occurs, but there is no fire, no immediate life threat from injuries and no danger of a second collision. If a 'good Samaritan' elects to 'rescue' the victim from the wreckage, causing paralysis or some other injury, a court may rule that good Samaritan laws do not apply because the victim was not in imminent peril and hold the actions of the rescuer as 'reckless' and unnecessary"

It makes it difficult to decide what to do. I dunno .... However, I have strayed from the original question about first aid kits. Perhaps this is a topic for further discussion in a different post. Apologies to the original poster for the thread hijack.

LW

Again I am not a medical professional so take any advice I give with two grains of salt and call me tomorrow if it gives you indigestion.

LW, You didn't stray far and I might have helped hijack Dwestes thread too.
I don't think he will mind much. I think he posted it to get people discussing it.

What you should not have in your kit should be as valid of a consideration as what you want in it, especially if space is limited.

I have read other forums and it is very common to see people listing huge kits full of material which the person carrying it has no training for so they wouldn't know how to use it anyhow.
Even if they were trained to use it usually the gear is not stuff that you would use unless you were in a hospital setting.

Here is Doug's basic medical kit from this site here
http://www.equipped.org/survlkit.htm



It is worth noting how simple his kit really is.

He lists 4 prescription items but in an urban setting antibiotics are not needed. The doctors can prescribe medications soon enough to handle secondary infections if they are needed. You should not be giving people narcotics either. Pain managment is more critical if you are in a remote location but painkillers can hurt a person's chances in some cases so it is better to let them hurt a bit until the ambulance gets there.
Even the wound washing material and the bezoin for gluing adhesive tape to skin can be left out in a small kit.

I think people should distinguish between home treatment for minor injuries and emergency first aid too.

From my experiences Medical personnel hated seeing drugs, creams, and lotions used by first aiders.
Here they even tell first aiders not to worry about wound cleaning very much because dousing a wound with antiseptics usually kills more tissue than it saves. Then they have to wash the iodine, betadine or peroxide out of the wound when they treat it anyhow.
They would rather see a simple water rinse and only see that if there is some kind of chemical like an acid, a caustic or a fuel that had to be flushed away.

I followed Mr. Ritter's lead in putting my larger kits together. Please "hijack" away, you guys are doing great.

That is a good link NightHiker.
I found it a good reminder for parts of a course I took 5 years ago.
I was surprised at how much I had forgot.
I guess it is long past time for me to do that course again.

I do remember that one of the problems pointed out in the course was getting responders to move on after the assessment to the next victim instead of continuing to do treatment on the first one they came to.

I think that is primarily due to having it drilled into us that once you establish contact with a victim/patient leaving them is abandonment. In a MCI, aside from the emotional enormity of encountering such an incident, it can take great willpower to override that sense of duty to a particular individual and move on to the next victim/patient.

Pete