this post was submitted on 27 Dec 2025
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The best thing you can do for yourself and those around you is take a first aid course. They are usually cheap or free through your local community college or community education programs, you can get a certification, and it will teach you when you need to seek assistance, and when you can handle it yourself. It’ll also teach you what’s worth keeping in a first aid kit, like butterfly sutures, and what isn’t (those pre-made kits are junk).
Everyone should take a first aid course. It should be done every 5 years ideally, if only because you’ll hardly ever use it, and recommendations do change.
So, if you can find somewhere, give everyone you know the gift of lifesaving knowledge! (As in arrange for them all to take the course with you, you all get the info and a nice bonding exercise. Make all the jokes about when it’ll be needed on you because you are a klutz)
Who knows, you or one of your friends/family may save a life someday!
I've done multiple first aid courses over my life. I've learnt CPR, abdominal thrusts, and even did an outdoor first aid course where they taught us how to keep people alive when help was 24 hours away. I've been taught how to dress wounds, but the assumption for all of these was that someone is in imminent need of help. There was nothing (that I remember) about how deep of a cut requires a visit to the emergency room.
Though you raise a good point, the last course I did was 15 years ago, I should probably do a refresher.
I think for cuts there's general rules for location, depth, and length to qualify as an emergency. Deep punctures/stab wounds should always be treated as emergencies, do not remove the object, but stabilize it so it doesn't cause more damage. An amount of blood equivalent to a can of soda is life threatening.
I've stayed current on first aid certifications for about a decade and grew up with a parent in the medical field. I still suck at knowing when something requires an er visit, quite possibly because family, friends, and neighbors would come over and get stitches on our kitchen counter rather than go to the hospital. The best I can say is, if you are questioning whether something requires a hospital visit, then it probably does. Better to be safe than sorry.