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If you are a type of person who would render aid in an emergency, one of the worst feelings of inadequacy is not having adequate medical supplies at the scene of a serious motor vehicle accident. I consider driving an inherent risk and tried to plan accordingly. I designed the core of my kit around the treatment of blunt trauma injuries. My limited assets, training and gear reduces my options for an ideal kit but I do feel more adequate than most acquaintances in such an event.
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Related to the subject in hand at a tangent: As well as having a means of providing care to injured parties you should also consider your own personal physical safety.
In Europe anyone involved in working on roads/highways/freeways has to wear, at the minimum, a hi-viz waistcoat. This includes all 911 personnel and maintenance crews.
France has taken this a step further. They now insist that there is a hi-viz jacket carried in every vehicle for each passenger - fine payable if found not to have one. These are to be worn if the occupants need to exit the vehicle on the motorway/freeway in the case of an emergency.
You may want to consider putting a hi-viz waistcoat with your kit along with a warning triangle.
Note: As a point of interest between the Euro countries I used to travel around it is mandatory to carry:
1. Spare glasses, if you wear glasses
2. 5 litres of spare fuel - some only require the carrying of a fuel can
3. First aid kit (approved type)
4. Hi - viz waistcoat
5. Warning triangle
6. Spare tyre
7. Around $25 cash. I used to keep it in an envelope with my registration docs.
8. Fire extinguisher
In Germany many people have a blanket and small pillow for first aid purposes as they are taught this is good practice when doing their driving course.
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I think Adventure Medical Kits offer a very good value.
My wife and I went on a snorkeling trip recently. One guy got a huge splinter in his foot from the dock. Do you think the boat had tweezers on board? No, but my AMK mini kit in my backpack did. The other turistas asked me if I was a Boy Scout. :p The rum came in handy to sterilize the safety pin and tweezers.
One concern is that medical kits that are too big can be too difficult to find stuff in a hurry. Keep the bandages, tourinquet, etc most (and quickly) accessible. Heck, a saline wound spray and a few BandAids in the console is better than nothing.
http://www.adventuremedicalkits.com/...2010%20Edition
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If you are building a car kit I would recommend at least two tourniquets. The reason being the most common mechanism of injury that would require tourniquet application on a roadway is a person standing behind one vehicle and being struck by another such as when changing a tire and getting something out of a trunk on the side of the road. This will commonly result in bilateral lower extremity amputations or crush injuries requiring tourniquet application. I personally carry 4 tourniquets in each of my vehicles as most people have a friend assist them with changing a tire so there are often potentially two victims. This is what I keep in each of my vehicles:
Bag of Nitrile Gloves - Size Large
4 CAT Tourniquets
BVM
Trauma Shears
Short of an AED I can perform any necessary, legal, life saving interventions I need to do prior to the arrival of a fully stocked ambulance. If you want boo boo stuff thats your business and there are plenty of appropriate kits available but I would keep them separate. I package everything in a large heavy duty ziplock and place it under the driver seat or between the seat and the B-Pillar so I can access it laying on the ground at my driver door, i.e. after a gunfight.
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Also I will once again advise everyone on this forum not to apply a hemostatic agent to another human being unless you are a licensed physician or working at that time under the direction of one. If you insist on making a poor decision please at least use an impregnated gauze product like combat gauze rather than a granular hemostatic agent.
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Whatever kit you decide make sure its secured. Floor of the backseat is not secured. You will want to be able to reach it from the driver seat. Think similar to where those small auto fire extinguishers are kept. A fire extinguisher is a good idea too. First aid is moot point if you on fire ;)
If you carry quikclot you must understand when to use it. I live in ohio and no EMS agency i know of carrys hemostatic agents like quikclot. In the civi world most bleeding can be controlled with pressure elevation and pressure points.
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Rob,
If you want, feel free to send me an email with budget and some broad goals and I can do some leg work for you.
Personally if I were putting together a kit for your level of training I would have a balance of trauma gear (OLAES, Primed gauze, TKs of some fashion based on budget, duct tape, gloves, etc), some minor to moderate injury type stuff (ABD pads, control wraps, SAM splint, etc) and some boo boo type stuff (72hr sick call kit, bandaids and the like).
Stuff that into a BFG DAP pack and you have a pretty solid setup that could be plussed up or retasked if you decided on something else later on.
Just some thoughts and something I have been looking at while playing with my DAP Small.
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To add some other thoughts...
Yes TQs are important but lets not forget things like non arterial wounds, you can loose a good bit of blood from a venous bleed that would not be call for a TQ and a pressure dressing or even an ABD pad and control/ace warp would fix. OR arterial bleeds not on extremities where TQs can not be used (had a patient once with a scalp arterial bleed that was difficult to control even with a stack of ABD pads and ace wrap, lost a significant amount of blood prior to our arrival from a relatively small laceration).
SAM splints are not perfect but are a balance of compact vs. function and can be used for orthopedic injuries or when treating more complex extremity bleeds.
A small blanket/couple of trash can liners/etc allow you to create a barrier between your patient and the world on a cold wet night should you not be able to move them, its not a down comforter but it will help retain some heat which helps both comfort and mortality rates.
A headlamp and a handful of chem lights allow you to ID/make visible yourself to others as well as mark multiple patients should you pull up on a incident involving more than one person.
The other stuff is good to keep around and I consider packs and third line type gear the perfect place to keep a range of items from life saving to boo boo. This isnt a IFAK, you should have items organized and compartmentalized to a point where they do not interfere with each other but should you need an ABD pad after placing a TQ you dont have to deal with two bags. This is a bad habit of large departments, they have a bag for everything so when stuff goes down you end up with 5 bags and a handful of hard items on a scene. Either have redundancy and overlap or just put it all in one bag.
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Mike I was going to email you when I posted this but had a hard time digging up your email address. If you still have mine shoot me a message.
I really like the *idea* of the DAP but the cost of the bag plus dappers is cost prohibitive in my case and for this application. To get set up with pack and pouches it's north of $300 and I still have to buy the kit.
Which brings me full circle to why I'm looking at pre-packaged commercial kits. The AMK Fundamentals or World Traveler kit coupled with one of their .5, .7, or .9 or even the Smart Travel kits for trips away from the vehicle (day hikes, etc.) seems like the best option for me right now from what I've been able to find on the market. I'm sure the bags themselves leave something to be desired in the durability department but they're also $30 (when purchased separately) and not $300.
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I like the BFG bag, too, but I think you, Rob, are taking a good approach. Like I said in another thread, look at all the posts and comments and go with what you want and need. We all come with different experiences and expectations. The way I approach stuff like this is using Six Sigma thinking: I look at probabilities and outcomes. The DAP pack is ultra-cool and has a high cool-guys-dig-it factor, but the probability that most civilians need something of that construction/price is pretty low. Just like tourniquets. I can justify why most people should have one, most people shouldn't have more than two because the probability of needing more than one, EVER, is so low that it falls into the "nice to have" catagory and not the "have to have" catagory.
For most people, pre-packaged kits are the way to go. Chinook Med, NARP, Practical Trauma, Galls, REI...between these vendors alone 99.9% of the population will find a kit that works.