Doing inventory of my trama kit. Glock 19 making an appearance as well.
What’s in your trauma kit?
Do people that even have kits like this even know how to properly use Half of what’s in there?
Many of us do. Those who were/are combat or tactical medics. Or even street medics (we carry all that equipment and more in our primary patient care bag).
Still, it’s great to have cool gear, but useless if you don’t know how to use it and train regularly with it. When was the last time you used a tourniquet on an actual wound? If the answer is more than a year ago, you better be training the hell out of it with people who know their shot.
I’m going to add some info here. Maybe it will help somebody, maybe not, whatever. Let me preface this by saying that I’ve never been a combat medic, no military experience, but I am a pretty experienced street paramedic in an urban area and have completed a lot of “tactical” medic training at my job. I’ve actually used all the components of my trauma kit on real patients several times.
Here’s what I carry, and what it is used for:
- Tourniquet. The most important piece of medical kit you can have. An ungodly number of preventable trauma-related deaths occur because of bleeding from the arms or legs, and it can happen in minutes. A tourniquet, rapidly applied, can save a life. And these are pretty simple to use to; easy to learn how. I personally have CAT brand tourniquets in my bags and on my gear for two reasons: a) they are recommended by the CoTCCC, which is the place to go for tactical medicine guidelines; b) out of all the ones I’ve tried, they are the easiest and most effective to use. I also carry a SWAT-T tourniquet in my back pocket everywhere, because it is compact enough to EDC and does the job (albeit, a lot more difficult to apply than the CAT).
- Emergency Bandage aka Israeli bandage. Can be used on top of wounds anywhere on the body and is easy to apply a great deal of pressure to. Bleeding is stopped in two ways: One, by cutting off the flow (tourniquet) and two, by applying enough pressure to the wound site to stop the flow, allowing clotting processes time to work. This works great to do that, and it works on torso wounds too.
- QuickClot Combat Gauze. This stuff is z-folded and incredibly easy to use to pack wounds. The way to use it is literally to just stuff it, ram it, jab it into the wound track until you can’t fit anymore. The substances embedded in the gauze help the clotting process inside the body to work more effectively, and the pressure created by packing the wound also helps. I also carry this in my back pocket every day.
- Chest Seals. Currently my trauma kits have a mix of HALO and HyFin seals. Both seem to work well, although I have more experience with the HALO ones since we use them at work. They are incredibly sticky, large (6-8” square) stickers that you put over bullet wounds to the chest to prevent the development of a collapsed lung.
- 24FR NPA with KY lubricant jelly. This is used to open up an airway and keep the tongue out of the way. Very simple to insert, but don’t do it or get one if you don’t know how, because you can screw it up without some training.
- ARS Needle Decompression Catheter. Essentially a very long, hollow needle with a plastic sheath around it that you insert through the chest into the lung cavity to relieve the pressure and re-inflate a collapsed lung. Definitely not something you should use without proper training, and even then, with extreme caution.
- Gloves. Because blood is nasty and there are some dangerous diseases that can be spread via blood. Gloves provide some barrier protection.
Pretty straightforward, and not that difficult to learn. These “blowout”/IFAK/trauma packs aren’t meant to be full-fledged medic bags. They are for anyone with any level of medical background to use quickly to keep people alive. It takes only a minimal level of training to do that.
Just because you don’t know how to use something, doesn’t mean someone else that’s at a scene(mass shooting, explosion, anything) won’t.
Great write up. I’m still building my new trauma bag. Major expense so I’m taking my time.
some of the items mentioned above, are they commercially available to civilians? can anyone recommend a decent online supplier?Most of the contents can be picked up at Amazon. ITS Tactical sells complete kits. Chinook Medical is a good source for the individual components. The combat gauze (LEO/MIL or Civilian Version) and SOF tourniquet are the most expensive pieces, costing around $50 each.
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