Getting First Aid Kit Supplies
If you have children and you go camping often or you are travelling a fairly long distance, it is a good idea to carry first aid kit supplies in your automobile. You will have to make sure that you have everything you could possibly need in the case of an emergency or even just if someone has a headache. The best thing to do to make sure that you have everything is to make a checklist or get one from the internet, which has the correct first aid kit supplies listed as per government regulations.
Most of the time, the symbol for a first aid kit is a green background with a white cross on it, but many people recognize a first aid kit as a white box or bag with a red cross on it. A medical kit can also be identified with the Star of Life on it. Whichever you prefer, you should always carry your kit with you and even keep one in your house just in case there are accidents and you need first aid for open wounds or someone gets sick in the middle of the night.
The majority of the contents of the first aid kit will be to deal with certain emergencies. This includes burns, cuts, pain, insect stings and bites, dehydration, cold, and other things. The official first aid kit supplies can be categorized into the following: Airway, Breathing, Circulation (ABC’s); Trauma Injuries, Personal Protective Equipment, Instruments and Equipment, and Medication.
For the ABC’s you will need to get a face shield and pocket mask for performing sterile resuscitation. Some advanced or commercial kits will also contain a bag valve mask and a manual aspirator among other things. For the trauma injuries, you should be prepared with various dressings, gauze, plasters, bandages, saline, soap, antiseptic, and in advanced kits, haemostatic to help the blood to clot in severe injuries.
When you move on to the personal protective equipment you will have include gloves, goggles, and perhaps a surgical mask to reduce the spread of infection. The instruments and equipment that you will need to carry include trauma shears, tweezers, scissors, alcohol pads or antiseptic rub, a thermometer, an emergency blanket and a penlight. Moving on to the medication, you will have to think about every eventuality that might occur and prepare for it. You should always include pain killers including aspirin, anti nausea tablets, diarrhea tablets (codeine is a pain killer as well), an epipen, rehydrate, poison treatments, antiseptic ointments, burn gel, antihistamine cream, and any other medication that you feel necessary for your family, such as asthma emergency treatment.
The amount of items that you include in the kit may vary depending on how far you are travelling and where you are going. If you are going on a car journey for a day and you will reach a destination where there is a pharmacy, you might want to leave out some of the items if you do not have enough space. It is a good idea though to keep your first aid kit supplies with you at all times and ensure that if you use something you restock. You never know what can happen, and it is always good to be prepared.
