Selecting a First Aid Kit

Series Summary

The term “first aid” refers to the immediate care that is provided to an injured or sick person. It is used to stabilize a patient until further medical treatment and assessment can be provided at a hospital or care facility. For most of us, a first aid kit is used primarily to treat minor medical emergencies, like small cuts or burns. But it is important to keep a first aid kit stocked with supplies you use regularly as well as those items you might use for a more serious situation until EMS can help.

In this series of free online videos you'll learn how to pick a first aid kit for your home. Dr. Susan Jewell shows you what medical supplies should always be in your home first aid kit, including bandages, alcohol, hydrogen peroxide, scissors, tape, gauze, cotton balls, ear & eye drops, a thermometer, splint bandages, medicines and more. Whether you're shopping for a new first aid kit, restocking, or building one from scratch, the tips in these videos will help ensure you're prepared for any minor medical emergency.

Video Transcript

"My name is Dr. Susan Jewell and on behalf of Expert Village today I would like to show you how to put together a very good first aid kit but before I start let me tell you a little about my background I am a clinical research physician and scientist in oncology, that's cancer, and in AIDs and HIV. I have been working at UCLA and also was trained at National Cancer Institute. So, that is my background. Lets go ahead and talk about the first aid kit. You can get, you can have several options in terms of a first aid kit. You can buy kits that are ready pre-packed and pre-assembled for you, something similar to this where it has all the basic items in the kit itself. These kits vary in prices and you can get them at several locations. Local pharmacies, drug stores or the other option is that you can actually assemble one yourself. And when you take that option I think you can put in as many or as little items that you need in the kit. Let's go ahead and show you some very basic items that you deffinately need in a first aid kit. In most kits that you buy, especially pre-packaged kits, usually they give you a several item list of contents and here's one for example in this kit that you see and list all the items that you will find and here it says we have adhesive strips, butterfly closures, gauze, cleansing toilets, and insect sting releif pads, so and so forth. Scissors (which is a very important), dressings, and so on. So that's important to have in a kit only because you know what's there and what might be missing that would help you to say that maybe I need this and you go an add on extra items yourself into the kit. Another item, I think, that is very important that should be enclosed in the kit and if it is not in the kit, I think my recommendation advice is go to and buy one. Because these, for example, here is a first aid and CPR sort of like a booklet, a very condensed, summarized booklet. I think this is important to have in the kit, the first aid kit, and these you can buy in any kind of medical store or that would give anything to do with medicine. I'll just breifly show you, for example this one is a good one because it is very detailed in terms that it shows you what to do if, for example, procedures or in an emergency it has numbers to give to you so you can call the appropriate department or whatever you need the help from, like 911 of course. And then it tells you what to do if you have somebody that has a heart attack. Here it gives you people that you have are unconcious what you need to do is CPR. infant CPR, and so on and so forth. Choking, bleeding, if somebody sort of ingested some poison it would tell you basic procedures to do before the paramedics or medical caregiver arrives at the scene. So, this is important to have in the kit. "