What Do You Include in a Home First Aid Kit?

Accidents can happen around the home and we should be prepared for when they do. This is especially true for families with young kids who are more likely to get injured while at home or when playing outside. Having a first aid kit is a great way to be prepared for these types of accidents, but what do you include in a home first aid kit?

Hand Sanitiser

Many people already have hand sanitiser at home due to the pandemic, but it is a very important part of a first aid kit. Hand sanitiser can be used to clean the hands before you attend to an injury or emergency. It can come in handy in cases where you cannot reach a tap and need to get started on treating an injury right away. Ensuring your hands are sanitised when dressing a wound helps prevent infections and keep things sterile while you work.

Wound Care Supplies

Many of the injuries that happen at home fall under general wounds. These include injuries like cuts in the kitchen or scrapes from falling. This means that you should have items that help with cleaning and dressing wounds in your first aid kit, especially if you have young kids.

For cleaning open wounds and cuts, you need an antiseptic solution, hydrogen peroxide, a bulb suction device for flushing wounds and a spray bottle with saline for cleaning wounds. For treating wounds, you will need aloe vera gel (also great for burns), antibiotic ointment, calamine lotion and hydrocortisone cream for inflammation.

To dress wounds, you will need bandages of different sizes to be used for wounds of various sizes, elastic bandage wraps which can be used for much more than wounds and scrapes, sterile gauze and adhesive tape for securing applied gauze. You may wish to buy the NuStat hemostatic dressing as a great solution to keep in your first aid kit for cuts and scrapes.

Medications

Your first aid kit should also include some over-the-counter medications that you might need quickly. These include allergy medication (including non-sedating antihistamines), aspirin or other pain medication (paracetamol or ibuprofen), cold and cough medication and antacids.

Ice Packs

There are a lot of instances where you need an ice pack at home but do not have the time to find something frozen. In these cases, you can use instant ice packs for cold therapy. All you have is to do is squeeze these ice packs and they will start freezing almost instantly. Although they do not get as cold as actual ice packs, nor do they remain cold for as long, they are still a great option for when you need something cold in a pinch.

Other Items

Other items to include in your first aid kit include thermometers, examination gloves, face masks, tweezers, a detailed first aid manual and cotton balls and swabs.

Having a first aid kit at home can be a great way to avoid further complications from injuries before a loved one gets proper health care. The good news is that you can get everything you need for your first aid kit by looking online and talking to retailers who deal with medical supplies.