What all medical supplies do you have in your bag?

@Flight-ER-Doc - I appreciate the detail you went to in your posts and admit I should have started with that. I'm not a doctor and don't even know where the nearest Holiday Inn Express is and admit that my ability is limited to the basics at best.

 

Thats OK....but as I've said in several posts, people think that what a CLS has is the endpoint for any medical problem. It is NOT.

 

I have to comment on the training aspect of this thread. Training is everything, whether it is firearms, starting a fire, ALS, first aid, .... In my experience, most people do not handle emergency situations well. Most become paralyzed by the trauma to themselves or others around them. However I have seen training change how an individual reacts to specific situations. First aid, TCCC , EMT training should be goals for families. Getting refresher and recurrent training will help save lives of the injured. So if you don't know how to use a chest dart why do you have it in a kit.

My kits are based on my potential needs. My EDC ifak is shears, cat,gauze, and chest seal, airway. My go bag is similar to what a experienced PJ would have available, plus some essentials for several days of natural disaster like I went through with hurricane Hugo. It is nice to have a lot of stuff but if you haven't trained, it's really not going to do anything but look pretty.

 

During an incident where a ultra lite went down, I was in S&R second on scene .not one parametric had a knife to cut the seat belts and get the victims out. They borrowed mine .
There had been several incidents that day, and they were borrowing from every one available having exhausted their own resources that day.
This is not the first nor the only time my gear wound up in the hands of some one else of the sake of the victims.
If you think about it, there is always some one more qualified than ones self out there for specific things, but until they show up, you do the best with what you got ,and what your qualified to do.

Techniques for resuscitation have changed through the years, the latest ones assumed to be best , fact, earlier ones worked.

Not discounting training in the latest greatest but , but i don't condemn a person for doing something, in place of doing nothing.
So if some one has gear that's way over their head, it is a margin of preparedness .in the event during a disaster some one trained happens by, and knows how to properly use said equipment, it will make a difference for some one.
Being a mechanic I know more ways to use a screw driver than most folk .It does not mean most folk can't use a screw driver ,they merely lack the experience .
A great many of us choose multi functional equipment ,and discover new uses all the time .
One last thing.
Much of what some prepare for is the long term , when there is no more modern medicine, and making do is all we got.
If all you've trained for is modern medicine, what do you do when its's gone ?

 

The medics didn't even have scissors? Pretty fing poor medics, IMHO.

OK. So you think that hoping someone will be around who knows what to do is a viable strategy.

Hopes and wishes are not a plan, or a strategy.

Why not spend some time and a little of the money people spend acquiring stuff that is not durable and does not have a good shelf life, and get some training and experience? The great thing about knowledge is that you can use it to know how to make do without all the neat gear.

I have a ton (actually, several tons) of just medical prep supplies. The list I posted was just my field gear for SAR, for nearly a worst-case scenario. But instead of having to care for one critical trauma for 24 hours, if I needed to care for two or three for 24 hours it isn't the gear that would let me do it: It's the experience and knowledge I have.

Not everyone can be a physician, of course. But everyone can get knowledge and it's always good to have - as long as you keep it up to date. Old knowledge may not be helpful, in some cases it might be actually dangerous (for example, the idea that pressure points are preferable to a tourniquet for stopping profound bleeding). With evidence and research, the best practices in medicine change - hopefully for the better.

 

I agree with the training if one has the opportunity and the $ to invest ,
Ideally if some one in the group has a bent to medicine, it's worth the investment for sure. but it's a gamble in any case, not knowing how devoted a person is to the group or some one looking to take advantage.
Especially with the nightmare Obamacare has turned into, a lot of doctors have gone under ground.
There are a few here I know of that have done this , that or retired very early .
There are so many foreign nurses, the quality if care is questionable in what was reliable hospitals.
I just brought a friend home from a hospital visit that was required of her doctor ,apparently she was significantly low in volume in blood and needed a transfusion, according to Him , the hospital received her, tested her ( 7 hrs) and agreed on her low levels and just sent her home no transfusion .
So I'm sorry if my confidence in modern medicine is not what your's is Doc. it's a world I have been observing a very long time.