A First aid box is compulsory in our house. This kind of kit is important to provide basic treatments for ailments and injuries that commonly occur at home. A first aid box will help to reduce the problems and risks of small to serious injuries. The aim is to prevent infection. There are many types of supplies that we can store in this kit. The benefit is to place medical supplies in one location. It will avoid too much time to look for particular medicines. We can look straight to this box without wasting too much time. The box should be placed in a reachable spot within a house. In this session let us share First Aid box Contents list.
Fundamentals of a First Aid box
Basically, a first aid kit is available in any stores. We can use it to store medical supplies intended for treatments of minor injuries. There are common contents including pain medication, adhesive bandages, as well as disinfectant. First of all, we can store airway or circulation health supplies. It’s to perform basic treatment for respiratory problems. Regular respiratory health supplies are a face shield and pocket mask. For advanced first aid boxes, we can store bag valve mask, nasopharyngeal airway, blood pressure cuff, suction unit and stethoscope. These supplies are rarely to use, but they come in handy when we need to perform basic treatments for respiratory issues.
Trauma Injury Supplies
Some trauma injuries like burns, bone fractures and bleeding, are usually the major objectives of first aid boxes. We can store items such as dressings and bandages. Mostly, we need to include adhesive bandages such as sticking plasters. What are the others? Well, we can put moleskin, sterile eye pads, roller bandages, waterproof bandages, elastic bandages, closure strips, triangular bandages, soap, saline, adhesive tape, antiseptic and also hemostatic. Do we really need hemostatic? It will be useful especially to treat severe bleeding. These items are available in most of drug stores or regular stores. We can buy any of them without troubles.
Personal Protective Equipment/PPE
PPE is compulsory in the first aid kits. The use of personal protective equipment will be different according to each kit. We can store some equipment based on the risk anticipation of infection. There are some usual infection control equipment products such as goggles (eye protection), gloves (cross infection prevention), a surgical mask (avoid airborne infection), and apron. For the instruments, we can include tweezers, scissors, trauma shears, alcohol, lighter, thermometer, antiseptic, penlight, cotton swab, and a space blanket. To pin bandages, we should by safety pins as well. These items tend to be difficult to get in the market. We need to find reliable sellers to get any of these items.
Medication and Life-Saving Drugs
Well, medication is quite important as the addition to a first aid box. It’s usual to include some medications in our first aid kit. The types depend on the practice range, and we really need the ones called life-saving drugs. Three major life-saving medications are aspirin, epinephrine, and diphenhydramine. Aspirin is useful to relieve pain, especially around the chest. The epinephrine auto-injector is often used to deal with airway swelling. It helps the body to open the airway, so we can avoid suffocation while waiting for the further helps. Remember, the effect of this medication is only short-lived. What’s about diphenhydramine? It’s imperative to prevent as well as treat anaphylactic shock. It becomes effective in emergency cases.
Next, we need to store some painkillers such as paracetamol, anti-inflammatory medicines, and codeine. Paracetamol is the most recommended painkilling medication. This drug is available mostly in the form of tablet. The anti-inflammatory painkillers are more useful to treat strains and sprains. NSAIDs and Ibuprofen are the examples. What’s about codeine? It’s functional to be both an anti-diarrheal and a pain killer. Don’t worry as we can buy these medications easily from drug stores. Even today we can use the internet to buy those drugs virtually.
Aside from painkilling medications, we also need some drugs for symptomatic relief. Loperamide is important as an anti-diarrhea medication. Those who live in third world zones should include it in their first aid box. The other symptomatic relief medications are oral rehydration salts, smelling salts, antihistamine, emetics and poison treatments. They will be helpful during emergencies, but we rarely suffer from any situations where we need those medications. Overall, it’s a good idea to prepare them before something bad happens to us.
First Aid box & Topical Medications
Topical drugs and medications are quite important in the first aid boxes. Mostly, antiseptics will be so much compulsory as a disinfectant. As an alternative, we can use alcohol pads. This will be useful disinfecting instruments to clean minor injuries and skin before applying a bandage. However, we shouldn’t use it in open wounds as it will delay healing. Next choice of topical medication will be antiseptic ointments. They are useful to prevent infection in wounds. These ointments contain some antibacterial ingredients such as bacitracin zinc, polymyxin b sulfate and neomycin. The other important topical medications are anti-fungal cream, anti-itch ointments and tincture of benzoin.
Check it up!
Aside from its regular usage, first aid boxes will be useful in a survival condition. For instance, alcohol pads will be helpful during emergency accidents. We can even use this kit in the wilderness and outdoor situations. Basically, we need to check our first aid boxes in a regular basis to make sure that the medications and equipment aren’t expired. We may need a flashlight while looking for particular medicines at night, so make sure the batteries work perfectly. As parents, we also need to introduce our kids in how to use the first aid kids during emergencies.
