As a prepper, it’s common to focus on water storage and food when you’re preparing for a possible emergency in future. Very often, preppers focus on buying gadgets and tools that will help them. Multipurpose knives, hurricane lanterns and water purification tablets are all necessary.
However, besides storing water, one of the most important components you must focus on is a first aid kit. There is always a chance that someone in your home or even you might suddenly be injured. This can happen at any time, medical emergencies don’t only occur during a crisis.
It’s vitally important to have a proper first aid kit at home. In this article, you’ll be given a list of items that you should purchase and add to your first aid kit. As you become better prepared, you can add more items as you see fit.
Bandages and Dressings
These will be used to treat open wounds or if you have a fracture, you can use them to make a sling.
Rubber Gloves
You need to wear this if you’re treating a casualty. You do not want to contaminate their wound or get the bodily fluids on your hands.
Scissors & Tweezers
The scissors will be used to cut the dressing and adhesive tape accordingly. The tweezers will be useful for pulling out splinters and other foreign matter in a wound.
Adhesive Tape
You need the kind of tape used for medical purposes. These are used to bind the dressing to the skin.
Razor Blades
If there’s hair around the area that you’re trying to seal with the dressing, the tape might not stick. Use the razor to shave off the hair around the area that you’re affixing the dressing to.
Eye Wash & Eye Patch
This is very useful if someone gets dust or foreign matter in their eye. If they have an injury close to their eye, you can dress the wound and ask them to wear the eye patch for extra protection.
Hard Candy
It may seem like a strange item to pack in a first aid kit but the sugar in the candy will help when dealing with a victim who is in shock. Ask them to suck on the candy and it’ll help to calm them down.
Burn Cream, Antiseptic Cream and Insect Repellant
You probably know what all these three items are used for. They’re important enough to have in your first aid kit.
Alcohol Wipes and Sterile Water
Alcohol wipes can be used to disinfect small wounds. For larger lacerations, you can use the sterile water to irrigate the wound. This is a very good measure to prevent open wounds from getting infected.
Thermometer and Nail Clipper
One will be used to see if you have a fever and the other will help you keep your nails trim and tidy.
Pain Killers and Over-the-Counter Medication
You should have some pain killers like Ibuprofen or Tylenol in your first aid kit. You may wish to add a bottle of laxative for constipation. You should also have charcoal tablets to treat mild food poisoning.
Tourniquet
When there are major injuries and you can’t stop the bleeding, you’ll need to use a tourniquet to tie off the limb, just so you prevent the victim from bleeding to death. This is an extreme measure and you should only use it if you have no choice.
Personal Medication
This is prescription medication that either you or a family member requires on a regular basis.
Sanitary Napkins
Besides their obvious use, they are extremely useful if you need to apply direct pressure on a large cut. They absorb blood well and cover a wide area. If the wound is deep, a sanitary pad is much more absorbent than gauze and will do a much better job. Make sure you only use unscented pads.
These are 14 of the most basic items you should have in a first aid kit. You can search online for extra items that you think might be useful to you. Alternatively, you may look at pre-packed first aid kits sold online and see what they contain.
You could either choose to buy one of those, or just follow their list of items and pack your own first aid kit. All that matters is that you have a good one ready to use at any time.