Preparing before an emergency plays a major role in making sure that you have all the necessary equipment before going into the outdoors. According to experts, devoted hikers and campers, emergency preparedness can reduce the chances of a disaster. It can save lives, make recovery faster and reduce fear, especially in those who are in this kind of situation for the first time. The best way to stay prepared for such situations is by carrying safety essentials, and the one you shouldn’t skip for sure is the trauma kit.
What Is a Trauma Kit?
In short, a well-equipped and user-friendly trauma kit contains supplies that can help stop severe bleeding. It’s a kit that contains supplies like tourniquets, dressings for controlling severe bleeding, hemostatic gauzes, bandages, rescue elastic wraps, rescue trauma shears and many other essentials that can save a life. A kit containing such products is designed for treating severe and internal injuries, and this is the main difference it has from a first aid kit.
What’s a Basic First Aid Kit?
A first aid kit, on the other hand, is a kit designed for treating basic and minor injuries like superficial wounds. The contained supplies like bandages, plasters and antiseptics are designed for treating minor cuts and scrapes, which isn’t the case with a trauma first aid kit.
Comparing Their Features
Skill Usage
As you can already assume, both of these kits have different skill levels. This means that a first aid kit can be owned and used by anyone, even vehicle owners need to have one in their vehicles, while the other one is different and cannot be used by anyone. The truth is that it’s also too good to have such a medical kit in your vehicle, which can come in handy in some life-threatening situations, but training must be done in order to use it properly. That’s because its items aren’t something you see daily and instinctively know how to use. Training must be done in order to know what they are, what their purpose is and how to use them.
Size
Another difference between these two types of kits is the size of the course. This might sound strange to you, but it seems that first aid kits can be larger than the other kits because they carry several duplicates of the same supplies. On the other hand, trauma medical kits are a bit smaller because they contain supplies that focus only on addressing and treating trauma.
Price
Given the fact that first aid kits contain more basic items that are cheap to buy, it goes without saying that they are more affordable than the medical response kit. The items they carry are basic and aren’t specialised, which allows them to be used by anyone. On the other hand, the items contained in a trauma response kit are more specialised and designed for saving lives, they certainly cost more. And this is the main reason why trauma kits are so expensive in comparison to first aid kits.
Supplies Accessibility
As you already know, first aid kits contain duplicate supplies and they allow for being organised and reorganised the way you want, however, this is not the case with emergency response kits. Given the fact that this kit has fewer but super specialised and important supplies, they need to be well-organised and easily accessible.
According to experts, all of the supplies need to be laid out as simply as possible for fast and easy access. This is of vital importance when someone’s life is at stake. In situations like this, life is of the essence, so everything needs to be organised and accessible to treat the patient’s life quickly and properly.
Training
Having the necessary tools in both of these kits is of vital importance for being prepared in emergencies. And as already mentioned, in order to use the supplies in emergency kits, you don’t need any training at all, as they are super basic and we see and use them daily. However, to use the supplies of the other one, you’ll need training. These supplies can literally save the life of someone, and this can be done only if you use them right.
Medical skills are essential for dealing with emergencies that can be life-threatening, and by having them, you can be more confident in yourself and prepared to handle anything that comes your way.
Finding these kits is possible only if you look in the right place. These kits certainly cannot be found in gas stations, drugstores or the local Red Cross office, which is the case with the simple first aid kits. They can be found in local pharmacies, medical supply stores and specialty stores.
