Do you carry a medical pouch with you when you go into the field? If yes, did you ever checked what was in it. If yes, did you change anything?
In this blog I will go over my personal booboo kit I made for airsoft events and other outdoor stuff. This kit is a part of the medical stuff I carry with me to small and big events. I will explain why I think it’s useful to carry something like this and also where it fits in my complete medical kit.
But let’s start with where I got my information from. I’m not medical schooled so all the information I will give you comes from friends that are medical schooled and from my personal experience in the field. I made a kit and showed it to the medical pro’s and adapted the kit to their input.
I’m a first aid dude at my workplace and get a yearly update, but we all know that’s not much. I also followed a TCCC course from Contact front, but that’s for my advanced kit.
My medical setup
In my medical system I have
- The booboo kit (belt) + refill kit (base)
- TCCC kit (belt)
- Medical bag (base)
The booboo kit is the lowest piece of equipment for medical use and that is to treat the minor injuries that happen during airsoft events. The kit is made as a personal kit, so the injured person will use his own kit to fix the injury. After it being used it’s the responsibility of the injured person to replenish his kit again.
Even if you don’t know how to treat wounds, it’s usefull to carry this kit or simular. It helps the person that knows how to treat wounds to help you without using all his own equipment.
That’s one reason why it’s interesting that everyone caries a similar kit and keeps it up to date.
The main function of this kit is to treat wound and keep them clean so things are not getting any worse, like infections and stuff. Keeping the wound clean is a very important aspect of wound care.
Requirements
The requirements the kit has to fulfill were:
- Being as compact as possible.
- Keep wounds clean until they can get fixed
- Only things you need
- Focus on outdoor use
The kit contains:
- Gauze pad small
- Gauze pad big 🡪 To cover the wound when treated
- Bandaid small
- Bandaid large 🡪 It’s a clear one, no dinosaurs on it. But this covers the wound too. 2 sizes to make choosing easy.
- Hibidil 🡪 Cleaning liquid, in a flask so you can put some pressure on it to clean the wound.
- Gloves 🡪 protect yourself or the others that treats you. Give him a glove.
- Safety pin 🡪 This is a small multitool for splinters, for thorns, for fixing your pants if your button snapped.
- Alcohol pre pad 🡪 clean your skin surface
- Moleskin 🡪 Blisters
- Paracetamol 🡪 Small painkiller, when you had to much to drink the night before and your head hurts. This might help you get trough the day.
- Round bandaid 🡪 This is perfect for BB marks on any skin. Clean it, put this over it and you will still look tacticool.
- Medical tape 🡪 another multitool thing, you can use this to keep the Gauze pads in place or if something is not sticking. Use this.
- Steri strips 🡪 If the wound is a bit gaping and you need to close it to prevent dirt from getting in there. It goes fast when this thing is not useful anymore. That is why I added it to the kit. When placed correctly, the wound will close much better.
- Gauze bandage 🡪Keep things in place a as a protective layer.
- Survival blanket 🡪 I have this in every backpack and is a life saver when it starts raining and the adrenaline is worn out and you start getting cold fast.
- Burn ointment 🡪 because hot coffee burns. In the field, you don’t always have running water with you. This will retract heat from the burn.
- Sting relief🡪 bugs and plants that want to kill you. Well at least it itches. This one was hard to find in a small container. I want to thank Pharmacy Thomas Vannieuwenhuyse for helping to find a solution. In the kits I made we’re going to test 2 options to see what people like the most.
You will see that the amount of the same things in the kit is rather low. This is because this kit will be in your bag, kit, pressed together, in the sun, in the rain, … That means that things will take a beating. By keeping a small amount of things in it, you will be able to treat your injury and then you have to replenish the kit with the things you used. You don’t have to think, Oh, I used 1 of those, how many do I have left. KISS principle.
Another thing is that because it will take a beating, the things inside will wear out faster. If you have backup stuff in your basebag, you can replace the broken stuff with some fresh stuff. Instead of throwing a big kit away, you just have to replace a few items.
This kit is something that might change during its use. I ask everyone that uses this kit to let me know when they used it and if something was missing. By doing that we can create an awesome kit to take with us in the field.
Medical stuff is something that is easy forgotten when going out in the woods. An injury is easy to happen and not treating the wound can make things a lot worse. Knowing how to fix yourself is a helpful tool. But to do that, you need some basic stuff and this is where this kit comes in handy.