Ask Lemmy

I actually have some experience with this!

I travel a lot and always have an IFAK and a somewhat extensive "boo boo" kit.

The IFAK covers serious trauma, car crashes, GSWs, whatever. Haven't had to use this thank fuck. Standard stuff though, take your Stop The Bleed. I carry a tourniquet (I like snake staff systems), compressed gauze, pressure dressing, chest seals, trauma scissors, gloves. You can safely reduce this to the tourniquet and the gauze for 90% of use cases though.

The boo boo kit contains more comfort items, stuff to turn a moderately bad day into a mild inconvenience. It has a bunch of stuff but by FAR the most used items are these in order of frequency:

Ibuprofen - carry many doses

Small bandages - 3M Nexcare are the good ones

Moleskin - helps with shoe blisters, friends use it a lot

Deviant ollam folding scissors - for cutting moleskin, hangnails, whatever. TSA doesn't care about them.

Pseudoephedrine - the behind the counter stuff, NOT phenylephrine from the aisles. This is the good stuff, helps with allergies, mild colds etc.

At least a couple bandaids

Gloves!! A pair or two of nitrile gloves takes almost no space. If you're patching up someone who isn't in your immediate circle, you have no idea what's swimming around in their blood, so always use gloves before handling it.

Similarly, another thing that I like to keep handy - but never actually see in things like commercial 1st aid kits, is a CPR sheet with a 1-way-valve: https://www.redcross.org/store/first-aid-supplies/cpr-keychains

Giving rescue breaths without it risks picking up things like oral herpes.

I'm a sideshow performer, and I bring one to every show. Mine has:

• Bandaids in multiple sizes
• Liquid bandaid
• Alcohol wipes
• Neosporin
• Sometimes aloe or burn gel if I'm doing fire (packets are best but hard to find)
• Tweezers

I keep mine small for portability, but you can always add on (gauze, medical tape, splints, absorbent pads, etc). They also sell first aid kits at most pharmacies of various sizes that can be easily refilled after.

Probably just a pair of scisors, a roll of bandage, alcohol, and paracetamol (a.k.a. acetaminophen).

Decide what your end goal is. Trauma kit, or just an ouch pouch? For basic injuries I pack adhesive bandages of various sizes, a little bit of gauze to help slow down a decent cut before bandaging, some ibuprofen, gloves, burn ointment, and maybe some antiseptic towelettes. In my camping ouch pouch I add in Neosporin for bug bites, tick tweezers, instant cold packs, and some nausea medicine.

In my portable trauma kit (it's actually a small pack with both ouch and emergency compartments), I have more gloves, a fair bit of different sized packing gauze (quick clot), a compression bandage, emergency foil blanket, chest seals, a sharpie, and mounted on the outside are trauma shears and a CAT Gen 5 tourniquet in a dedicated holster. As a bonus, I have a moldable splint in an emergency survival bag with the rest of my kit.

If I remember, I can share some pics in a few days.

You should include some flexible plastic, like cling film. In case you have to bandage an arterial or jugular wound, you need something that is impermeable to stop the bleeding. In case of jugular wounds, it's also necessary to stop the heart from sucking air in through the dry end of the severed vein, which could make a bad situation worse.

Scissors.

Tourniquet.

Of all the things that you should have a tourniquet will be one of the few things that will mean the difference between life and death.

Triangular bandage - like a multitool with many uses

Snake bite compression bandage - if in snake territory

Consider an Epinephrine Injector and a tube of Oral Glucose Gel, depending on how off-grid you are going, or the needs within your travel party.

Ever used hydrocolloid bandaids? They are the best! Yeah, they're more expensive, and as usual, Band-Aid brand is by far the best. I've used them in the field dozens of times.

Would not use them on puncture wounds and they seal the bacteria in quite nicely. But for surface wounds they're antibacterial and a bandaid all in one.

• Tiny bottle of artificial tears - great for flushing stuff out of your eyes, offers some relief if hit by tear gas or pepper spray too
• Tweezers
• Scissors, unless you carry some kind of blade anyway