Ask Lemmy

It's important to note your location/purpose.

I'm in Australia so I always include multiple compression bandages for snake bites.

Despite being flat this might be too big to fit in, but if you can–emergency blanket. I once helped a disoriented senior who had fallen and injured themselves and accidentally left their keys in their apartment. I wish I'd had something to keep them warm while we waited for the FD to get them in.

A fresh tube of super glue. Cyanoacrylate glue was initially developed as field sutures. That's why it's so easy to glue your fingers together. It's a great fast and durable way to stop bleeding.

this is my general purpose kit, which I carry everywhere. it's not pocket sized, it's true, but it's also not very big and you can cram a kit like this anywhere in you car, like under the passenger seat for easy access.

a tourniquet, but make sure it's from a reputable medical supply dealer and not a cheap one, those tend to break. a trauma wound dressing (AKA Israeli bandge ), and wrapping gauze for packing wounds. hemostatic is best, but regular will do fine, because it's more about pressure than anything. a sharpie for writing the time on the tourniquet after application. a pair of gloves to protect you from bloodborne pathogens. this might seem like overkill to some people, but keep in mind that serious accidents can happen just about anywhere, and having these with you at all times can save a life. it takes just a few minutes for a person to bleed to death, but someone with these lifesaving tools needs just seconds to apply them.

also antacids, cough drops, acetaminophen, and an itch relief stick. something to remove ticks if you have them where you live. for going to protests there's a few other things you would obviously want in order to help deal with chemical irritants, but those don't need to be carried most of the time.

tourniquet if you live in gaza or israel

also look up how to improvise one with a shirt and a pen

My personal philosophy with first aid kits is to start from treating life threatening wounds and then build up from there so the three absolutely most crucial pieces would be:

• Tourniquet
• Pressure dressing (e.g. Israeli bandage or OLAES) - for bleeding that doesn’t require a tourniquet.
• Hemostatic gauze (like QuikClot) - helps stop bleeding, especially for junctional wounds (groin, armpits)

I actually have some experience with this!

I travel a lot and always have an IFAK and a somewhat extensive "boo boo" kit.

The IFAK covers serious trauma, car crashes, GSWs, whatever. Haven't had to use this thank fuck. Standard stuff though, take your Stop The Bleed. I carry a tourniquet (I like snake staff systems), compressed gauze, pressure dressing, chest seals, trauma scissors, gloves. You can safely reduce this to the tourniquet and the gauze for 90% of use cases though.

The boo boo kit contains more comfort items, stuff to turn a moderately bad day into a mild inconvenience. It has a bunch of stuff but by FAR the most used items are these in order of frequency:

Ibuprofen - carry many doses

Small bandages - 3M Nexcare are the good ones

Moleskin - helps with shoe blisters, friends use it a lot

Deviant ollam folding scissors - for cutting moleskin, hangnails, whatever. TSA doesn't care about them.

Pseudoephedrine - the behind the counter stuff, NOT phenylephrine from the aisles. This is the good stuff, helps with allergies, mild colds etc.

Gloves!! A pair or two of nitrile gloves takes almost no space. If you're patching up someone who isn't in your immediate circle, you have no idea what's swimming around in their blood, so always use gloves before handling it.

Similarly, another thing that I like to keep handy - but never actually see in things like commercial 1st aid kits, is a CPR sheet with a 1-way-valve: https://www.redcross.org/store/first-aid-supplies/cpr-keychains

Giving rescue breaths without it risks picking up things like oral herpes.

I have a leatherman squirt multitool, has a blade and scissors. And yeah, paracetamol, Codeine, loperimide. Bandages, glue. I keep some electrical tape in there as well, not necessary first aid, but so useful.

At least a couple bandaids

• Tiny bottle of artificial tears - great for flushing stuff out of your eyes, offers some relief if hit by tear gas or pepper spray too
• Tweezers
• Scissors, unless you carry some kind of blade anyway

I'm a sideshow performer, and I bring one to every show. Mine has:

• Bandaids in multiple sizes
• Liquid bandaid
• Alcohol wipes
• Neosporin
• Sometimes aloe or burn gel if I'm doing fire (packets are best but hard to find)
• Tweezers

I keep mine small for portability, but you can always add on (gauze, medical tape, splints, absorbent pads, etc). They also sell first aid kits at most pharmacies of various sizes that can be easily refilled after.

Probably just a pair of scisors, a roll of bandage, alcohol, and paracetamol (a.k.a. acetaminophen).

Decide what your end goal is. Trauma kit, or just an ouch pouch? For basic injuries I pack adhesive bandages of various sizes, a little bit of gauze to help slow down a decent cut before bandaging, some ibuprofen, gloves, burn ointment, and maybe some antiseptic towelettes. In my camping ouch pouch I add in Neosporin for bug bites, tick tweezers, instant cold packs, and some nausea medicine.

In my portable trauma kit (it's actually a small pack with both ouch and emergency compartments), I have more gloves, a fair bit of different sized packing gauze (quick clot), a compression bandage, emergency foil blanket, chest seals, a sharpie, and mounted on the outside are trauma shears and a CAT Gen 5 tourniquet in a dedicated holster. As a bonus, I have a moldable splint in an emergency survival bag with the rest of my kit.

If I remember, I can share some pics in a few days.