Preparing Multiple Emergency Medical Kits

I see a lot of people ask questions on the internet, people ask me in classes about what they should have in their medical kit, as if they maybe will only ever have one medical kit. The fact is I think people should have a lot of different types of medical and safety equipment if they're going to go all the way through the training to know how to use it properly and actually think ahead to staging kits in multiple places. You might have a kit in your bedroom, you might have a kit with your emergency response defensive firearm in your house. You may have kit that you carry with you every day, or just to have something that you keep two or three things, a tourniquet, compression bandage, maybe hemostatic agent that you keep in a cargo pocket on your body. A lot of us will also stage medical kits in our vehicle. So I wanted to go over these three different kits, and kind of how they fit into my emergency medical response or my general first aid response especially for as much traveling as I do inside of the personal defense network tour truck, and when I'm out on classes. So this is the primary kit for emergency medical response. And this bag is just what I have for everyday medical needs. So if you think about bumps and bruises, if you think about things that aren't emergency, but involve medicine, that's what this bag is going to be. So this is really a first aid kit. This is a health, this is band aids, things like that. This has some antiseptic wipes in it. There's going to be some regular over the counter type medicine that people have stomach problems. If I have a headache, something like that, I've got that. We've got eyedrops, these kinds of things. Cold pack, we've got that kind of a thing inside of this every day, bumps and bruises. I have an allergy, I have a head cold, I have a cut that I just need to put a band aid on. That's what this is for. And you notice it's not marked for emergency medical. I know what it is. It's my everyday first aid non-emergency kit that lives primarily inside of the vehicle. This kit obviously is marked for emergency medicine and looks like emergency medical gear. And this is my vehicle response kit. And the way this works is that this medical kit actually comes off of this every time I go out on the range. If you've been in a class with me, or you've seen pictures of me out on the range, you probably see this bag. And it's the only bag I own in this pattern. It obviously looks very specific. It's got the markings that people know that it's emergency medical equipment. And this is my gunshot wound. This is the blowout kit type emergency first response. Got a safety cutter on the outside. Inside, we've got a compression bandage, we've have pressure dressing, we've got a chest seal, we've got a hemostatic agent. That's what this is for. This is for the immediate response to a gunshot wound on the range. And that's why I separate it from this bigger emergency kit and put it out on the range. Now, when I get done with a class, this gets back attached to it and this larger kit has additional tourniquets. And inside, it's got some of what I would consider higher level emergency medicine. When this is put together, this is what I think of as grabbing. If I have to leave my vehicle, if there's a problem, if there's a natural disaster, if a building has collapsed, if there's been some kind of a large-scale multiple person injury situation and I feel compelled respond, or I want to be able to provide medical equipment, this is what's going to go with me when I leave that vehicle. So in addition to tourniquets, we've got a lot of additional compressed gauze here for in terms of soaking up blood. If there's a lot of injuries, lacerations, kind of blunt trauma, that's done in vehicle accidents. If I see a car flip over in front of me on the interstate, I'm compelled to help, these are the kinds of things that I want to have. I also have a splint, a sam splint in here, I've got some airway type stuff here to help keep airways open. I've got a decompression needle in here, and of course as we get into more advanced medical equipment, we need to make sure that we have the advanced medical training to support its use in those emergency situations. So think about having multiple medical kits, not just what you would have in your one medical kit, not just what you would have in your gunshot wound response. If you do a lot of training, you're watching personal defense network, you think about firearms a lot. But think about the everyday bumps and bruises, the things that you're going to want to have on hand, especially on that long training day or on that camping trip. And think about the bigger picture, large-scale disaster, multiple car traffic accident, multiple people hurt situations, as well as that emergency go-to kit. Make sure you know what everything is for, make sure you know how to use everything that you've got and that you have an organized way to get to it when you need it. Regardless of how you approach your medical equipment staging, I think it's important to understand where you have the things you need in an emergency, and where you have the things that you're going to need as a matter of convenience, regardless of whether you're helping yourself or others.