Do you carry medical when wheeling?

[Chunky White]

A little off topic but how many of you who carry medical kits are former or active Military or LEO? I have taken first aid and CPR classes in school and once on a construction job site where they needed extra guys to know first aid and CPR but have never carried anything. I am just wondering if those of you who do carry do so because of your training.

I should order a kit

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[drewcnit]

I carry a basic first aid and trauma kit, I bought on amazon like so many others. In all honesty though, I've never opened it/gone through it and I'm woefully unprepared past basic first aid I learned in the boy scouts 30+ yrs ago...
One thing though I will mention, most organized events I've been to have just a few requirements, a first aid kit, an extinguisher, a battery tie down, and seat belts.
The Jeep club I ride with most often, won't let you on the trail without an extinguisher and first aid kit.

 

[JWM PLAYS]

A little off topic but how many of you who carry medical kits are former or active Military or LEO? I have taken first aid and CPR classes in school and once on a construction job site where they needed extra guys to know first aid and CPR but have never carried anything. I am just wondering if those of you who do carry do so because of your training.

I should order a kit

I am not LEO or military. I am a licensed security officer and personal protection officer in my state. My duty and my license is for armed/uniformed and armed/plain clothes (to simplify). I work both uniformed and plain clothes for my church (unpaid volunteer). That is what got me into training to be able to respond to injuries for myself and others.

 

[Wolf Island Diver]

Shit wrong type of medical! But yes a first aid kit too.

I always carry the legal limit of one ounce of this for emergency uses. You never know when you’ll encounter a concert or festival of some kind out in those Virginia mountain towns.

 

[Duece McCracken]

A little off topic but how many of you who carry medical kits are former or active Military or LEO? I have taken first aid and CPR classes in school and once on a construction job site where they needed extra guys to know first aid and CPR but have never carried anything. I am just wondering if those of you who do carry do so because of your training.

I should order a kit

I'm not LEO, EMS, or Military.

I do partake in firearm related activities, and work construction. So I train to keep my friends and family alive if stuff goes bad.

First aid is a general life skill. Everyone should learn it. I seem to patch up boo boo's all the time on people. Thankfully nothing too serious, but I have the bases covered pretty well for things more critical, that I'm confident enough to handle. Stopping the bleed is very important.

So learn how to treat things, and buy some supplies. Keep them in date, and stored properly. You should do a practice run with the stuff, so you learn any quirks to the specific items you have. Hopefully you just have to treat small lacerations, scrapes, tiny burns, etc, but are ready in case things get a bit hairy.

 

[GA D90]

Keep in mind, “Stop the bleed” training, while very worthwhile only represents a small segment of the probable injuries or illness on the trail.
More likely issues are, crush, fractures, burns, heat & cold, and illness’s (allergies, N&V, cardiac)
That’s why some general first aid training is really important.
I put on a an informal class every couple years for the group I wheel with. That covers CPR, and basic first aid. With The goal of stabilization till medical help gets there
Over the years, doesn’t get used much but when you need it , it can make a BIG difference.

 

[JWM PLAYS]

Keep in mind, “Stop the bleed” training, while very worthwhile only represents a small segment of the probable injuries or illness on the trail.
More likely issues are, crush, fractures, burns, heat & cold, and illness’s (allergies, N&V, cardiac)
That’s why some general first aid training is really important.
I put on a an informal class every couple years for the group I wheel with. That covers CPR, and basic first aid. With The goal of stabilization till medical help gets there
Over the years, doesn’t get used much but when you need it , it can make a BIG difference.

Agree. The class I take is 8hrs and covers a plethora of scenarios including evaluating the seen, controlling the scene, assessing the injured, providing treatment etc.

 

[Wolf Island Diver]

I was a Firefighter/Paramedic years ago, which means zero now ?. In my Jeep I used to carry a full ALS kit with IV stuff minus 02, a drug box and life pack. I wouldn’t recommend an IV kit for most places/people due to both lack of training and the average distance to a medical facility. Focus on bleeding control to preserve blood volume rather than mess with replacement. You really need more people for that. An AED is great but overkill for most people to carry in their vehicle. The exception is that on a group trail ride/event they’re probably a good idea, but the organizers should carry one.

Obviously some places are so remote you may need fluids. Keep in mind Good Samaritan laws won’t cover some wanna-be, using equipment they’re not trained to use that they acquired through questionable means. The exception is an AED which are designed for novices and there’s no case law on liability for their use only for businesses not having them. Most IV equipment, on the other hand, is semi-controlled and requires a prescription. Also the fluids don’t last especially if kept in a hot vehicle. Unless you’re and active EMT-I or P, I don’t recommend carrying it.

Today I carry no fluids. I carry a trauma kit for GSWs including NAR tourniquets, chest seals, quick-clot gauze, shears, etc. Basically a big IFAK. This rides velcroed on the back of my headrest, so it’s visible to people. If someone needs to smash my back window out to get to it in an emergency, so be it . Keep in mind in a real GSW scenario you can’t have enough dressings, 4x4s, gauze, etc. Don’t forget a space blanket to keep the victim warm. I carry towels for wet dogs, wet kids, beach days, etc. These are good for stabilizing broken bones, as blankets, etc. I don’t carry a BVM because the latest CPR protocols emphasize chest compressions and electrical therapy over airways anyway and I can always do mouth-to-mouth. Inadequate chest compressions are the biggest issue with CPR. Ribs crack with correct CPR. I don’t worry much about TPTs as you usually you have enough time to get this taken care of in a medical setting rather than the field. If you don’t know what you’re doing you can easily kill someone trying to treat a pneumothorax. I never had much luck with plastic airway devices as a medic. I always just intubated. I don’t carry a intubation kit. Again, how far you are from civilization needs to be considered even if you have the training.

I also carry a separate general kit with bandaids, burn cream, snake bite kit, tick key, triple antibiotic ointment, solarcain, chemical cold packs, etc. I don’t like to mix the two kits. Don’t prepare for the 1% case neglecting the common campground injuries that you’re more likely to encounter. Don’t carry a trauma kit and neglect sunscreen, bug spray, doing tick checks, etc.

Lastly, you can lookup local places to get nasal Narcan. This is worth carrying, just make sure it’s not obvious you have it as people steal it. I pushed a lot of Narcan in my days as a medic. It’s a great way to instantly save someone’s life.

Good comms to emergency services is the most important thing to have so carry an emergency communicator in the back country

 

[chaosjake]

For anyone who assembled their own kit, or even if you just want a better bag for your Walmart special, I really like the MOLLE bag I got from Amazon. It's about twice the size of a typical Velcro tear-off first aid pouch and has good organization inside.

I'll copy & paste my Amazon review below, but it's a good bag for whatever supplies you carry.

I like to keep a pretty extensive first aid kit in my truck, and I haven't been able to fit all my gear in a standard size MOLLE tear-away first aid kit. Instead, I had been using a small child's backpack. This pack is just the right size for the MOLLE panel on the back of the driver's seat in my Jeep, and it's large enough to hold a nice selection of gear.

The two smaller pouches that fold out are also on velcro tear-away tabs. They have mesh fronts and a zip closure. I keep a selection of meds in one and dressings, gauze, alcohol and iodine prep, steri-strips, etc in the other. Under those, there are a series of fairly large elastic loops, where I keep bulky items and things I want to access quickly: an Israeli battle dressing, disposable CPR shield, ACE bandage, poison ivy wash.

On the other side, there are four open slot pockets with medium elastic loops. I keep rolls of first aid tape in a few sizes in some of the loops. In the others, I have a ziplock with a handful of common sized bandaids, exam gloves, and space blankets. I keep an instant icepack, moleskin, and a pouch with instruments like tweezers, fine scissors, a scalpel blade, more exam gloves, a lighter, and other odds and ends in the slot pockets.

The outside front is fully covered with PALS webbing and velcro for all your accessory attachment needs. I have a sharpie, mini glowstick, EMT shears, a flashlight, and a hemostat threaded in there, but you could add more pouches if you want. It's not super apparent from the pictures, but if you tear the main pouch away from the back/mounting panel, it reveals an adjustable shoulder strap, which is a nice touch.

Time will tell how it holds up, but I like the size and layout for my vehicle first aid kit.

 

[Wolf Island Diver]

I’ll say another thing about this whole subject. I’ve met more people that claimed they had medical training than actual medical professionals. Male dominated activities, like overlanding, shooting, etc tend to attract a lot of folks, I’ll just call LARPers. We have this really bad tendency in this country to downplay the importance of professional experience, expertise and for people to arrogantly assume they can just do things or know better because they took a course or read a book or worse bought some gear. The internet creates bubble of circular reinforcement of this Dunning-Kruger effect.

To put things in perspective, in my years as a medic, most of the non-ER MDs and nurses I encountered in the field were completely useless in an emergency. And these are highly trained and educated professionals that I respect greatly. I’m taking about Cardiologists in their offices with a patient, that don’t know how to run the MI protocol. The FD shows up and the patient looks like he’s about half dead, and the doctor is standing there, repeatedly, taking his blood pressure as if that act is a real intervention. That’s when you have to say “Excuse me Doctor, but get the @&;$ out of my way!” I’ve had to have law enforcement remove doctors and nurses from my scene. You would think an MD would supersede an EMT, but emergency medicine is a specialty for a reason. ACLS, BTLS and PALS training and protocols are the same for EMTs, nurses and doctors, and if you don’t have these specific training courses under your belt you’re ill-equipped to perform most of the interventions required in serious emergencies or use the contents of your IFAK. The difference between taking an EMT-B course and being a working paramedic with EMT-P is like the difference between playing Gran Turismo and being on an actual F1 team. CPR/First Aid, Stop the Bleed training is minimal training. I was a Paramedic which means I’m not one now and not qualified to do that job anymore without retraining. I used to be isn’t the same as I am.

When I was a paramedic I worked a lot of MIs, GSWs, severe traumas, MVAs, fires, mass casualty incidents and innumerable code blues. No one is prepared for these incidents until you experience one and there’s a reason first responder agencies provide counseling to their members after many of these incidents. There’s a reason the average time to burnout (functional PTSD) for a working EMT is 2 years. It’s the experience of real horror.

Performing CPR is an exhausting and gruesome experience. Intubation is hard and if the patient needs it, they’ll die without it. Severe traumatic injury often involves screaming adults, people crying for their mothers, seemingly endless amounts of blood, chaos, and confusion. I’ve seen experienced medics puke their guts out on scene and keep working the patient. You’re often stripping people naked and touching the intimate parts of their bodies. That’s a lot harder than it sounds to mentally overcome. And you have to prioritize your interventions and plan on the fly. A lot of interventions won’t work. Less than 1% of patients survive cardiac arrest. There’s a smell to these events. People are in mental shock. They often can’t answer your questions. They’re frozen. They’re speaking gibberish, they’re praying. They’ll grab you and beg you to help them. In water, they WILL drown you. Sometimes they’re combative. I’ve been physically attacked by numerous patients including many of the Insulin shock patients I encountered. Victims of trauma lose their bowels, bystanders scream and try to interfere. You get accused of things. You’re brain isn’t designed to handle this. It’s designed to shut down to protect you.

Treating children in these circumstances will permanently damage you. I still have a hard time watching any program where a child is hurt because of the memories it brings back. Today, the sound of a pin feed printer, which in my station would start running a few seconds before the tones would go off, still makes my heart skip a beat, 20 years later. I loved being a firefighter and I moved on for what I thought were better career fields but when I left the department I had PTSD and it affected my marriage as it does with most first responders. There’s a reason suicide is a common cause of death for first responders.

Most people freeze under these circumstances. This includes new paramedics, firefighters and cops, the first time they encounter them. Your senior medic, master firefighter or police officer will watch you like a hawk because until they trust you to perform you’re a liability that will get them killed. Remember this is for a fully trained and released rookie professional.

Most civilians shut down and freeze in disbelief rather than run in fires and traumatic events. This is why seniority matters, precepting matters and continuing training until the protocols are muscle memory, matters. No amount of classes or attitude or equipment will come close to heavily supervised experience from people who do the job. I don’t want my kid’s teacher, packing heat and I don’t want overconfident random dudes treating me or my family with their mail order stuff.

I’m not trying to discourage people from getting trained, buying equipment or trying to help but anyone who thinks they want to help needs to accept that they may not be able to and approach this with as much humility as humanly possible. This is where all the BS has zero currency. Where the rubber meets the road. Nothing you can do can fully prepare you for the real thing or it’s aftermath.

 

[JWM PLAYS]

I’ll say another thing about this whole subject. I’ve met more people that claimed they had medical training than actual medical professionals. Male dominated activities, like overlanding, shooting, etc tend to attract a lot of folks, I’ll just call LARPers. We have this really bad tendency in this country to downplay the importance of professional experience, expertise and for people to arrogantly assume they can just do things or know better because they took a course or read a book or worse bought some gear. The internet creates bubble of circular reinforcement of this Dunning-Kruger effect.

To put things in perspective, in my years as a medic, most of the non-ER MDs and nurses I encountered in the field were completely useless in an emergency. And these are highly trained and educated professionals that I respect greatly. I’m taking about Cardiologists in their offices with a patient, that don’t know how to run the MI protocol. The FD shows up and the patient looks like he’s about half dead, and the doctor is standing there, repeatedly, taking his blood pressure as if that act is a real intervention. That’s when you have to say “Excuse me Doctor, but get the @&;$ out of my way!” I’ve had to have law enforcement remove doctors and nurses from my scene. You would think an MD would supersede an EMT, but emergency medicine is a specialty for a reason. ACLS, BTLS and PALS training and protocols are the same for EMTs, nurses and doctors, and if you don’t have these specific training courses under your belt you’re ill-equipped to perform most of the interventions required in serious emergencies or use the contents of your IFAK. The difference between taking an EMT-B course and being a working paramedic with EMT-P is like the difference between playing Gran Turismo and being on an actual F1 team. CPR/First Aid, Stop the Bleed training is minimal training. I was a Paramedic which means I’m not one now and not qualified to do that job anymore without retraining. I used to be isn’t the same as I am.

When I was a paramedic I worked a lot of MIs, GSWs, severe traumas, MVAs, fires, mass casualty incidents and innumerable code blues. No one is prepared for these incidents until you experience one and there’s a reason first responder agencies provide counseling to their members after many of these incidents. There’s a reason the average time to burnout (functional PTSD) for a working EMT is 2 years. It’s the experience of real horror.

Performing CPR is an exhausting and gruesome experience. Intubation is hard and if the patient needs it, they’ll die without it. Severe traumatic injury often involves screaming adults, people crying for their mothers, seemingly endless amounts of blood, chaos, and confusion. I’ve seen experienced medics puke their guts out on scene and keep working the patient. You’re often stripping people naked and touching the intimate parts of their bodies. That’s a lot harder than it sounds to mentally overcome. And you have to prioritize your interventions and plan on the fly. A lot of interventions won’t work. Less than 1% of patients survive cardiac arrest. There’s a smell to these events. People are in mental shock. They often can’t answer your questions. They’re frozen. They’re speaking gibberish, they’re praying. They’ll grab you and beg you to help them. In water, they WILL drown you. Sometimes they’re combative. I’ve been physically attacked by numerous patients including many of the Insulin shock patients I encountered. Victims of trauma lose their bowels, bystanders scream and try to interfere. You get accused of things. You’re brain isn’t designed to handle this. It’s designed to shut down to protect you.

Treating children in these circumstances will permanently damage you. I still have a hard time watching any program where a child is hurt because of the memories it brings back. Today, the sound of a pin feed printer, which in my station would start running a few seconds before the tones would go off, still makes my heart skip a beat, 20 years later. I loved being a firefighter and I moved on for what I thought were better career fields but when I left the department I had PTSD and it affected my marriage as it does with most first responders. There’s a reason suicide is a common cause of death for first responders.

Most people freeze under these circumstances. This includes new paramedics, firefighters and cops, the first time they encounter them. Your senior medic, master firefighter or police officer will watch you like a hawk because until they trust you to perform you’re a liability that will get them killed. Remember this is for a fully trained and released rookie professional.

Most civilians shut down and freeze in disbelief rather than run in fires and traumatic events. This is why seniority matters, precepting matters and continuing training until the protocols are muscle memory, matters. No amount of classes or attitude or equipment will come close to heavily supervised experience from people who do the job. I don’t want my kid’s teacher, packing heat and I don’t want overconfident random dudes treating me or my family with their mail order stuff.

I’m not trying to discourage people from getting trained, buying equipment or trying to help but anyone who thinks they want to help needs to accept that they may not be able to and approach this with as much humility as humanly possible. This is where all the BS has zero currency. Where the rubber meets the road. Nothing you can do can fully prepare you for the real thing or it’s aftermath.

Long post but this is actually the part I hate about all this the most. I have the equipment, I’ve been trained but what’s going to happen should I ever need it? That is the part I can’t answer and the part I think about the most. I would like to think that I could respond quickly and as I was trained but how can I know. Perhaps I’ll never have to find out and I’m okay with that but until then, I’ll keep training and carry the gear.
Edit to add: I have packed a wound in a slab of beef in denim with simulated blood and applied a TQ on an extremity with simulated blood but I still wonder if I’ll be able to do it if needed.

 

[Minty JL]

Always

 

[Ali689]

A little off topic but how many of you who carry medical kits are former or active Military or LEO? I have taken first aid and CPR classes in school and once on a construction job site where they needed extra guys to know first aid and CPR but have never carried anything. I am just wondering if those of you who do carry do so because of your training.

I should order a kit

Yep. Retired leo

 

[Duece McCracken]

Lot's of good points in this thread.

I'm not qualified to run around and treat serious injuries. I just have first aid training, and my experiences with nonserious injuries. I try to be as effective as possible for the situations that are most common in my activities. I get the hell out the way of better trained people, in all aspects of life, lol. If there's nobody better, I step up, and handle the situation as logically/calmly as possible within my limited skillset/training.

There's only so much I can realistically prepare for as a non professional. Entirely too much is beyond my level, which is basic. As stated above, being able to call/get proper help is big. So as much as I'd like to be an expert. It's not feasible for me (at this point of my life) to both get all the training and years of hands on experience to be truly competent.

So, I keep up with what I know. Simple stuff. The situations I run into most often, and what training tries to prepare me for. I stock supplies that I use often, and then some stuff I hope to never use, but in the middle of nowhere there isn't many choices. So I do what I can to learn how and when to use stuff.

This is my mindset as just a dude with basic first aid training, and experiences in basic-ish boo boo management, lol.

 

[GA D90]

…I’m not trying to discourage people from getting trained, buying equipment or trying to help but anyone who thinks they want to help needs to accept that they may not be able to and approach this with as much humility as humanly possible. This is where all the BS has zero currency. Where the rubber meets the road. Nothing you can do can fully prepare you for the real thing or it’s aftermath.

I have to respectfully disagree with your ending premise.
I think ANY amount of training is better than none. Now, I’m not talking about binging YouTube videos or staying at a Holiday Inn Express . I mean legit training from a professional or agency. This does a couple things, it gives the didactic training of procedure, and more importantly give some desensitization of what to expect.
Granted this is not going to make everyone a seasoned medic, but it may make the difference in someone’s life.
I wholeheartedly recommend the people get trained (maintain training)
at any level.

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