Posted: 5/1/2016 8:30:30 PM EDT
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For those with advanced medical training, what type of supplies are y'all keeping at home, and to what level or disaster are you stocking for?
My wife and I are debating how much to keep and surprisingly I'm on the lesser side, mainly as I see it getting very unwieldy once you pass basic IV capabilities and need to escalate into meds. |
Nemo enim fere saltat sobrius, nisi forte insanit.
Almost nobody dances sober, unless he happens to be insane
Almost nobody dances sober, unless he happens to be insane
| I'm not going to bother keeping IV or any other ALS supplies at home especially with OSDH recently emphasizing their stance on and the legal aspects of acting outside of medical control. By the time I have all the BLS care I can render in progress the truck should be there anyway. |
| I have no intent of offering those level of services to anyone other than family, and only in emergency services where I do not expect help in a timely fashion. Hence the debate with my wife, I'm kinda same mindset that I don't want to go full blown as that's an expensive rotating stock for low likelihood use. I'm thinking advanced BLS and control leaky fluid and a scale and a few other things. IV Fluid may be overkill for now |
Nemo enim fere saltat sobrius, nisi forte insanit.
Almost nobody dances sober, unless he happens to be insane
Almost nobody dances sober, unless he happens to be insane
| I thought long and hard about everything you're going over right now and came up to pretty much the same conclusion. I figured solid BLS skills would carry me as far as anything reasonably could. Truthfully, I'm not super convinced current prehospital fluids make that big a difference in patient outcomes anyway. |
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I've had a fairly well-stocked bag of tricks, but am paring it down through attrition/expiration of items. Part of me still wants to have a few fluids and non-scheduled injectables for things other than trauma (e.g. nausea, dehydration, allergic reactions, altitude sickness, etc.), but the same question arises: what is the end point? One can go down the rabbit hole of building a mini ambulance, and my STOMP bag was encroaching on that territory with traction splints, advanced airway devices, a plan to get an O2 delivery system, etc. I could max my credit card and still never have enough stuff to deal with every eventuality. I could jump through the hoops to get higher scheduled injectables, but then need to comply with double locking and record keeping, etc.
Of all my medical bags & equipment, the big one got used once to numb up a neighbor's heel in the middle of the night while another physician friend removed a crochet hook. The CCRK Squad bag in my truck got used once, when I used the SAM Splint to stabilize my own broken leg for the ride to a hospital. For example, this is only a portion of my airway roll. You can see a disposable laryngoscope blade, an endotracheal tube and nasal airway pulled out for the picture, and a King LTD behind that. Off to the left in green is the rack of different oral and nasal airways, endotracheal tubes, Magill forceps, etc. Not in the shot are the Melker cric kit, pulse oximetry, and a few other things. To be fair, airway's probably over represented because of my specialty, but the whole bag is not practical to carry far, and someone getting intubated in austere conditions is in dire shape. 
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Like fine herbs, dreams only develop their full fragrance when crushed and ground into a fine powder.
-LowBeta
-LowBeta
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Don't discount the benefit of OTC medications and basic hygiene products for disaster prep.
Alcohol, hydrogen peroxide, iodine, anti diarrheal, anti mucosals, etc... Also, having enough dressings and supplies to take care of minor wounds for more than just a day or two. Dressings have to be changed, you may acquire more patients. Take care of the small stuff so that it doesn't develop into big stuff. As was pointed out, you likely won't be treating serious conditions so you need to be STRONG on prevention. That includes having things like perhaps surgical masks, leather gloves, chainsaw chaps and so on and using them. If you can't pick up the phone and have an ambulance right there, or run down to WallyMart you need to be able to make do. At least for a while. |