Travel First Aid Kit

Efficiency in a Home First Aid Kit

A home first aid kit is like a mini-doctor office. Mom or dad runs for the kit when it’s time to deal with scraped knees on the kids or accidental cuts from doing yard work. A first aid kit shouldn’t be something you hide in a closet and never use. It’s a great way to keep all the minor emergency supplies in a single spot.

Homes that don’t have a first aid kit usually have supplies scattered throughout the house. The bandages are in the downstairs bathroom drawer. The ointment is in the upstairs bathroom medicine cabinet. The place where the gauze was stored is a complete mystery at this point.

When someone experiences an injury, the last thing they need to be doing is running from room to room gathering up the first aid supplies. This is especially true if the person is bleeding. Many mothers have moaned about the fact blood from a non-serious cut on a kid’s finger resulted in hours of carpet cleaning simply because no one knew where the bandages were hiding.

Keeping a home first aid kit handy can solve all these problems. With a first aid kit stored in its designated spot, the whole family knows exactly where to find band-aids and ointments for treatment of minor emergencies. In more serious situations, such as deep cuts, rapid response can be crucial. The kit should be well-stocked and designed to meet household needs taking into consideration the size of the family.

A typical home first aid kit will include the following items.

• Sterile gauze pads
• Compresses
• Disposable gloves
• Ace bandages
• Antibiotic cream or ointment
• CPR mask
• Safety pins
• Band-aids
• Tweezers
• Scissors
• Tape

Other items can be added to the kit as required by household activities. You can also include a small supply of important medications if the kit is also to be used as an emergency kit. But if you store medications, make sure the children cannot access the box. You should consider having one box the entire family uses on a regular basis and a separate box stored for disaster purposes.

The home first aid kit is a simple idea with major importance. There have been thousands of cases where quick access to a first aid kit minimized an injury. For example, when bleeding heavily a compress can stop the flow of blood long enough to reach the emergency room.

If you don’t have a home first aid kit, there’s no time like the present to rectify the situation. Your family’s safety and health are too important to jeopardize. Having first aid supplies on hand at all times should be standard practice in every household.