With summer comes outdoor activities like hiking and camping, and yard work. With the warmer weather comes more interaction with wildlife like snakes.
Knowing what to do with snake bites could help you to come out on top in a bad situation. In this article I will be discussing some first aid, dos and don’ts so you can save the day.
Continue reading Should YOU Tourniquet a Snake Bite?
Tourniquets enjoy too much of the spotlight. With all the glorious combat saves a good TQ has, the hardworking pressure dressing gets forgotten in civilian emergency preparedness.
Yes, of course TQs are important, but they only count for approximately ¼ of your body. There are other places where a wound would be life-threatening, but untreatable with most tourniquets.
That’s where a good pressure dressing and wound packing comes in. It handles the bleeding that TQs miss.
Continue reading 4 Styles of Pressure Dressings Explained
If you have a good understanding on how to use your gear, it frees you up to think outside the box and come up with solutions to problems you might face in an emergency.
Everyone wants to be that person who saves the day, calm, cool, and collected while the world goes to hell around them. It’s an admirable trait and one anyone can cultivate with a little practice.
Part of that journey includes having a good understanding of your gear. If you know how to use what you’ve got, your effectiveness and efficiency (both essential for saving lives) skyrocket.
Here’s a brief run-down of what a pressure dressing is and why you need one (or a dozen) in your trauma kit:
Continue reading If You Don’t Already Know, Here’s the Theory on Pressure Dressings:
An emergency usually means you have little or no resources available to recover from a bad situation. Being able to extend the life of precious resources like trauma gear might become an essential skill set, and it happens to be one that medics pride themselves in.
Unless you're heading out to do errands in a fully stocked ambulance, you aren’t going to be able to carry all the things you might need for trauma control. And the situation only gets worse for multiple casualties.
Some things you just can’t get around, like carrying tourniquets for life threatening bleeds or seals for chest wall punctures. But if possible, carrying items that can be used for more then one type of injury is good for extending the number, and different kinds of emergency trauma you might encounter.
Here’s a list of items that can handle more than one job:
Continue reading Extending Your Resources: TOP 5 Multi-Use Trauma Gear
Full disclosure: I’m the one that decides what gear should go in our kits. And if it isn’t obvious already, I receive a financial kick back for talking about the MMM kits.
But I’m also confident this is an excellent trauma kit full of top-of-the-line gear and priced better than any comparable kit on the market. I take a lot of pride in the value we offer, and it’s my hope that more trauma gear is placed where it can save more lives.
One of my favorite jobs during my career in the medical field has been teaching trauma classes to organizations looking to be proactive in preparing for a disaster, either natural or manmade.
Continue reading An Extremely Biased Review: The Mountain Man Medical “Mass Casualty Trauma Kit”
*This is Part 2 of a 3-part series. Click Here for Part 1. Come back next week or click here for Pt 3.
Cars Don’t Explode
If you’ve seen an action movie, you know well how vehicles explode at the very slightest provocation. In reality, car manufacturers try very hard to come up with designs to ensure this doesn’t happen. It’s bad business to produce vehicles the blow up.
I’m sure its possible, given the right conditions, but you shouldn’t be attempting to drag a casualty from a car because you’re worried its gonna blow.
Continue reading Car Wreck First on Scene: What to Do Pt 2
Research is a vital component to medical care. Without medical researchers constantly developing new techniques and testing the effectiveness of old ones, we’d still be stuck with medieval era medicine.
Thankfully, the medical world is a constantly changing and shifting environment, which is why we no longer drill holes in our patient’s head to let out evil spirits and cure mental illness.
Progress is a good thing, and we need to continually question why we do what we do, and if there's a better way.
Continue reading Bleeding Control: Does Elevating the Wound Actually Help?
“If the tourniquet isn’t high and tight, you’re wrong.”
While this isn’t wrong advice, it’s important to understand where this tourniquet procedure came from and why we’re constantly being told to place the TQ as high up on the limb as possible.
Continue reading Is a “High and Tight” Tourniquet Wrong?
Nothing throws a wet blanket on holiday festivities like a serious injury. Try talking politics with your idiot uncle with a burned hand after the turkey fry oil ignited.
Best to avoid injuries with proactive planning then to spend Christmas morning in the ER. According to the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), injuries are on the rise during the holidays.
Here are the top 3 most common ways to get injured during the holidays:
Continue reading Jingle Bells or ER Visit? Top 3 Holiday Injuries
It’s impossible to be prepared at all times and knowing what to do when you don’t have any medical gear can be the literal difference between life and death.
Even a paramedic with a fully stocked ambulance has finite supplies, and if the situation is bad enough, anyone could easily run out.
If you haven’t already read what to do for bleeding, make sure you check that out before you continue with this article so everything makes sense.
Sucking chest wounds are treated quickly and effectively with the quick application of a chest seal. Penetrating trauma to the chest can cause a Tension Pneumothorax (TPT), a potentially life-threatening condition, but how can you treat it with no medical gear?
Continue reading What If You Don’t Have a Tourniquet or Trauma Kit? Pt 3: Sucking Chest Wounds