The courses I have attended, they all said that once skin is burnt it can't be retrieved, so the best approach is stop the pain. Water takes away the heat and reduces, or eliminates, the pain.
Firstly - remove the burn cream !
This first aid kit is fine for home use:
Worth having though. My mother fell through a glass door at my house a few years ago (we thought the door was toughened. It wasn't.) and we needed some big dressings. The doctor in A&E asked who did the First Aid and when I sad "Me", said that they were well done. Helped to compensate for the guilt...
I use premade self-adhesive dressings in single sterile envelopes, made by Melolin or Propax. You just tear them open, remove the backing and apply. No cutting to size, or using bits of gauze of dubious sterility.
The most useful thing in my kit is a large supply of sticking plasters in various sizes and materials.
Some kits conform to Red Cross/St Johns standards. Also, I believe that kits for workplaces must have certain items.
I'd add:
Disinfectant
Cotton wool
Sticking plaster on a roll
Scissors
Medical Tape
Sensayuma is not a variety of desert cactus.
Well, it depends. If you're going to die from blood loss in the next minute, and can't stop the bleeding with direct pressure, then it's a good thing.
My first aid/medical kit includes plasters, micropore, fabric tape, sterile needles, sutures and the normal bandages and stuff. I don't use creams and ungents but I do have a bottle of topical antibiotic powder which is very good on anything that gets a bit weepy. Personally I am not too worried about the sterility of a dressing as if the wound is large enough to require an emergency, improvised dressing it isprobably severe enough that it will require A&E treatment where it will be debrided etc anyway. If the patient lives long enough to worry about infection then the first aider has probably done a reasonable job already.
The one thing that I swear by, to the extent of usually having one in pocket, is the military field dressing. These are a large, sterile dressing that come ready to use and wrapped in a waterproof pouch. I carry one on the principle that everytime I have come across an incident requiring a kit I haven't had one but all the time I carry a kit I haven't needed it. Apparently if you leave hay bales around the house they will stop tigers from eating you in the night too....
Cheers
Mark
Thanks for all the replies, looks like I'll be getting:
Plasters Tweezers Eyewash Antiseptic cream (Burnol ;) ) Two or three big wound dressings Painkillers Surgical/medical tape
Also of use: Note to not hold small items with fingers when angle grinding...
Anyway, found that PVC tape and kitchen roll can make good DIY plasters...
cheers, Pete.
Chips and gravy? ;-)
Well there you go......
Dave
Yes I agree, but how many would know to relaease the pressure at least every 10-15 mins, without training.
Dave
Common sense, I would have thought.
Besides, I'd hope that an ambulance would have arrived within 10 mins if I was in a tourniquet situation.
Owain
That's posh - it's usually bog roll and sellotape for me.
Having spoken to my paramedic daughter, the burn cream is a definate no no. Anything you put on a burn has to be removed in A&E.
Ambulance crews use sterile medical grade cling film, but apparently in an emergency ordinary cling film is better than none.
Her advice is to wrap burns in cling film, keeps them from drying out, keeps germs away, doesn't rip off skin when removed by A&E crew.
Dave
Or a clean tesco carrier bag will do (the non-print side against the skin)?
Owain
snipped-for-privacy@ukmisc.org.uk (Huge)typed
Remember old sticky plasters sometimes don't stick, so replace them every three years or so.
Ian Stirling typed
If you can't stop the bleeding with direct pressure, you may well worsen it with a tourniquet. It is much easier to obstruct venous blood flow than arterial.
Apply greater pressure over a smaller area.
"david lang" typed
Agreed. Transparency of cling film also minimises wound disturbance as opinions are collected.
Owain typed
In a dire emergency, yes but my Tesco bags are neither clean nor transparent.
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